


Through The Darkness

by Lynzee005



Category: Twin Peaks
Genre: Gen, Season 3 AU, The Secret History of Twin Peaks - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-18
Updated: 2017-05-21
Packaged: 2018-09-18 08:21:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 25
Words: 62,015
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9376520
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lynzee005/pseuds/Lynzee005
Summary: What would happen if Cooper emerged from the Lodge into a different world than the one he left behind?





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by The Secret History of Twin Peaks and the various theories floating around about alternate timelines and/or universes. 
> 
> EDIT: 17 Feb 2017--changed the tense. I don't know why I started writing this in present tense. I never (or very very rarely) write present tense...it was hard to stay in so why fight it?

FBI Special Agent Dale Cooper opened his eyes and saw stars. The tiny pinpricks of light in the velvet black firmament stretched above his head, canopied between the tops of the trees that lined his field of vision, vast and infinite and deep. He hadn't seen stars in he couldn't remember how long. As he stared at them, he thought he might cry. 

He was laying on the ground, on his back. It was cold, but he relished the feeling of fresh air against his face. His hands rested at his sides, palms down; he moved his fingers against the grass, pressing his fingertips into the soil, gently at first and then more insistently, as if he needed to bore into the earth itself to prove that this was happening and he was really there. His senses were bombarded. The smell of fir trees and of the cold itself, the hardness of the ground against his back and its pliability against his hands, the feeling of dirt building up beneath his fingernails.

Those stars.

He could have stayed there, digging into the grass and staring at the heavens, all night. But he heard someone calling his name. A familiar voice. One had hadn’t heard in so long he was surprised he remembered it.

He groaned in response, and the reverberation of his voice against his sternum sent a series of startling shockwaves out and along his nerves to every part of his body. In the silence that followed, he felt empty, gutted. He wanted to feel the vibration again—he wanted to know it was real, that he was actually feeling what he was feeling—so he let forth another groan, louder, though still nothing more than noise. On the third go, his mouth coaxed and molded the sound into the shape he needed for that sound to become a word. He released it to the frosty night air, felt the coolness against his lips and tongue that finally brought tears to his eyes.

“Help,” he said.

Two figures materialized on the periphery of his sightline. In the darkness he couldn't make out their features, but something of their mannerisms and the space they took up at his side told him who they were: Sheriff Harry S Truman and Deputy Andy Brennan. Relief flooded his body, dilating his blood vessels, and he felt the hot-cold flush of blood in his extremities as the man on his right helped him to sit up.

“Coop,” Harry growled as he maneuvered himself so as to prop Dale up against his knee. “You okay?”

Dale still had his fingers dug into the grass. He lifted his right one but couldn't focus on the sight of it in front of his eyes; his nails were thick with soil, though, and as he brought it to his face, he smelled the dampness. 

“What happened?” he asked, his voice croaked and soft.

“You just…” Harry tipped his hat back with the tip of his finger, letting out a sigh of his own that told Dale that he was in the same boat. Nearly. “One minute you were here, and the next you were gone.”

“How long—?”

Harry shrugged. “Twenty four hours and change.” 

“What day is it?” 

“Sunday.”

That was not what he meant. “The date,” he pressed. “The year.”

“March twenty-sixth,” Harry replied. “Nineteen eighty-nine.”

It took a moment but he pieced the words together into the statement they were. It was a declaration that made no sense. _It can’t be…_ “No.” Dale furrowed his brow. “No, that’s not right…there’s no way that’s right…”

On his left, Andy shifted. “Harry, look.”

Dale tried to spin his body to look at where the sheriff’s deputy was pointing, but the motion made him dizzy and he had to close his eyes to keep the nausea from rising in his throat. 

“Oh my god…” Harry intoned, and without losing his steadying grip on Dale torso, he began barking orders. “Over here! We need backup!”

Andy got up and rushed off into the darkness in the direction Dale was pointing. Dale couldn't see what the fuss was about, but he heard several more bodies rush into the clearing. For the first time, Dale noticed the red and blue flashing lights of the police cruisers that shone off the ghostly pale trees that surrounded him. 

“Is she okay?” 

“Is she breathing?”

“I’ve got a pulse!”

Dale heard the commotion and once more tried to turn to face the centre of the action. He forced past the dizziness and pushed his hands into the ground to lift himself up. But Harry’s hand on his chest, pressing him back into Harry’s knee, stilled him. 

“Whoa there,” he said. “You’re not going anywhere.”

“I need to see her. Is she okay?”

Harry continued to press his hand into Cooper’s chest. “Audrey’s being looked after, Coop. Don’t worry about her. You gotta relax. Tell me what happened in there?”

Dale squeezed his eyes shut. “No…no, no, not _Audrey_. _Annie!_ ” he said. “I need to see _Annie_. How’s _Annie_?”

The sheriff paused, long enough for Dale to take two shuddering breaths to Harry’s single, drawn out sigh. 

“Cooper…who the hell is Annie?”

Dale whirled to look at the sheriff. For all the time and distance that had stretched between them, he looked the same as he ever did. But behind the kind eyes lingered a confusion that Cooper knew he was mirroring. It was something he couldn't shake.

“Annie. Annie Blackburn,” he said. “Beautiful, blonde. Norma Jennings’s younger sister.”

Harry just shook his head. “Norma _Jennings_?” he asked. “You must’ve hit your head…”

The sheriff attempted to feel his way around Dale’s skull with his right hand but Dale pushed his arm away. “I didn’t hit my head,” he said. “I want to know what happened to Annie?”

“I don’t know who Annie is,” Harry told him. “But I can tell you that your ex-partner showed up at the end of the pageant last night. He kidnapped Audrey Horne and took her here. We caught up with them but it was too late, and he took Audrey with him into…wherever it was.”

“No,” Dale shook his head. “You’re wrong. It was Annie who won the pageant, and Windom took Annie to the Black Lodge. It’s been Annie I’ve been searching for for the last…god, it’s been _years_ , Harry. I’ve been gone for years!”

Harry soothed a hand up and down Dale’s back. “You couldn’t have been gone for years,” he said. “You were gone just a little more than twenty four hours.”

But Dale remembered it differently. He remembered blinding flashes of light. Windom Earle dressed as Margaret Lanterman. Annie being whisked off the stage. Figuring out the details of the map and the mad dash to the forest to find and stop Windom before it was too late.

He remembered walking into the woods and coming across the grove, the circle of sycamores, the pool of black sludge in the center. He remembered the red drapes, and finding his way in. He remembered wandering hallways for ages, never getting anywhere except older. He saw Annie, and Caroline. He saw Windom. He saw BOB.

“It was years,” he said. “It _had_ to have been years…”

Harry patted his shoulder, and Dale used the lull in the conversation to push himself up and away from the sheriff’s grasp. 

“Careful, Coop,” Harry said as Dale gained his feet.

“Where is she?”

Harry turned and in the dim light, Dale made out the shaded outline of Andy’s brown jacket against the background of the green grass and dark earth. He walked towards him, slowly and on unsteady legs, until the pale skin of a pair of women’s legs became visible, jutting out from the bottom hem of a black dress. She was missing one shoe. Her hair was ebony black, short, wavy, and fanned out beneath her head against the dark ground. 

Dale knelt down in the dirt beside her. 

“Audrey?”

He still couldn't believe it was her. It shouldn’t have been her. _This isn’t right_ , he thought. Still, he reached out and touched the side of her face, his fingers cupping her cheek; his thumb grazed the spot beside her eye. She didn't stir, didn't move a muscle. 

E ntranced as he was by the sight of her, frozen in her youth the way he remembered her, it was suddenly his own hands that captured his attention. Looking down at them, he saw them the way they used to be—young and strong, no lines or wrinkles along his knuckles, no spots.

They were the hands of a man twenty-five years younger than Dale knew he was. Than Dale  _felt_ he was.

He had no idea what to make of any of it; none of it, not one thing, made any sense.

Sheriff Truman came to stand next to him and put his hand on Cooper’s shoulder. “Ambulance can’t make it up the pass. We’re gonna have to take her to the hospital in the truck.”

Dale didn't take his eyes nor his hand off of Audrey’s face. The placid expression she wore did little to reassure him; he had no idea what had happened to her in there. She shouldn’t have been there at all. 

In fact, she _hadn't been_ there. He knew she hadn't.

_What is happening?_

“I’m going with you," he said.

Harry nodded slowly. “Yeah, I think it’s a good idea for you to see a doctor too…”

“But I don’t _need_ a doctor, I need…” _What, Dale? What do you need?_

_Answers._

_How?_

He shook his head. "I need to make sure Ann— _Audrey_ is okay..."

Harry put his hand beneath Cooper’s elbow and helped him stand up as Deputy Hawk—he hadn't even seen him there, though he had been across from Dale the whole time—lifted Audrey carefully in his arms and started moving down towards the line of vehicles on the path. 

“Steady,” Harry said.

“Harry, I don’t know what’s going on,” he said. “But none of this is right.”

“Okay,” Harry said. “We’ll figure it out. First let’s get you looked over—”

“Audrey was in there?” Dale asked. “With me?”

Harry nodded. “Right after Audrey won the pageant…”

“But Annie won,” Dale muttered to himself.

The sheriff sighed. “Cooper, I swear to you, there’s never been anyone named Annie…Norma Hurley has always been an only child, and no one’s seen Ed’s sister since—”

_Norma Hurley? Norma and Ed?_

“Harry…” Dale croaked. “Everything is just so wrong. How can it all be so _wrong_?”

The sheriff clapped a hand on Dale’s shoulder. “We’ll figure it out,” he said. “Right now, you’re here, Audrey is here, you’re both gonna be okay." Dale heard his friend's voice, soft and calm, and he knew he should feel placated but he doesn't, not by a long shot. 

"We just need to take things slow," Harry continued. "One step at a time.”

Dale closed his eyes and took three deep steadying breaths that did little to steady him at all. When he opened them again, they had made it across the clearing and were standing at the truck. Harry opened the back door for him; on the opposite side, Hawk maneuvered Audrey into the backseat.

Dale climbed in, still weak and unsteady but laser-focused on the task at hand, which was to position Audrey comfortably in the backseat for the bumpy ride back to town. He helped Hawk, hooking his hands beneath Audrey’s arms and pulling her in until her head rested against his thigh. She sighed and mumbled; he heard his own name on her lips. He caressed her hair with one hand and wrapped his other arm tightly around her middle, holding her close, as he closed his eyes once again.

“Dale?”

_When did she start calling me Dale?_ he wondered.

Still, he stroked her face. All of his attention was on her, the miracle of her youth, his youth. It gave him a point of reference, even if that point sent the world off-kilter.

“I’m here, Audrey.” _I shouldn’t be…but I’m here…_

The truck’s engine started up, followed by a short blip of the siren before the red and blue lights began flashing. Harry drove, pushing their way down the mountain with slow and steady precision, away from Glastonbury Grove and toward the town Dale thought he’d never lay eyes on again.


	2. Chapter 2

Doctor Hayward held up two fingers. “How about now?”

“Two,” Dale said, blinking away the sleep that clouded his eyes. He didn't know what time it was, or where he was—aside from the general knowledge that he was at Calhoun Memorial—but he knew that his head hurts, in spite of the painkillers administered a half hour earlier, and that even though he had consumed several glasses of water the inside of his mouth was still Sahara-parched. 

He wanted a cup of coffee; he had actually forgotten what it tasted like.

Dale felt a sudden and painful shock when the doctor flicked on his penlight and shone it directly into his eye. He flinched and pulled away.

“Hold still, Agent Cooper,” Hayward admonished gently, and Dale straightened his head for the doctor to try again. After a moment of blindness, Hayward’s face came into focus. “Sluggish pupillary response, but I’m not overly concerned.” He put his things back in various pockets of his white labcoat. “You’ve been through the wringer. Your emotions are on overdrive. You’re tired. Brain chemistry is likely to need a little while to calm down.”

Dale nodded. He felt his heartbeat in his throat and Will Hayward’s eyes on him as the doctor stood up to his full height and coughed, not because he had to but because it seemed like the thing to do to fill the silence.

“Do you, uh...want to talk about something, Agent Cooper?”

Dale’s attention felt divided. He was not entirely sure he'd returned yet to the world outside the Red Room; it was as if he might close his eyes and reopen them to find that this whole thing—the woods, the drive back to town, Audrey—had all been a dream from which he was gradually awakening, but that he was really still there, caught in the same endless loop he'd been in for twenty five years.

_Twenty five years...how do I know it's been twenty five years?_

Time meant nothing in there, not like it did now. He'd been counting the minutes on the clock behind Hayward’s head—the one whose hour and minute hand had remained fixed but whose second hand had continued to tick, making thirty revolutions around the clock face, marking the passage of time non-relatively.

It struck Dale that Doc Hayward’s clock was actually the perfect metaphor for his entire situation, and he choked back a small sob as he regained some clarity of purpose and looked the doctor in the eye.

“How old am I, Doctor Hayward?”

Hayward narrowed his eyes and seemed slightly taken aback by the query. But it was momentary; he looked down at Dale’s chart on the table beside him. “Well, according to this, you turn thirty-one this year,” he replied. “Why do you ask?”

Dale furrowed his brow. _It’s just not right..._

He tried again. “Is there any medical reason for a person to feel like they're... _out of place_?” he asked, realizing in an instant that the question wasn't the right one and was so far from coherence as to be laughable. So he tried once more. “What I mean is...for someone to feel as though they don’t belong...here?”

Hayward lifted his hand to the side of his head and scratched the spot above the top of his ear. “Well, Agent Cooper, there _are_ conditions that can elicit symptoms such as those you’re describing,” he said. “Trauma can certainly bring about a sense of disconnect with reality. Now, I’m not a psychologist, but I do know that, speaking broadly, some dissociative disorders are known to cause this as well.”

Dale nodded slowly, but was only distantly aware of Hayward's words. "So I need a shrink?" he asked.

"Well, now, that depends," Hayward said. “How long have you been experiencing these symptoms?”

He glanced at the useless clock out of force of habit. “What time did I emerge from the woods?” Dale asked drily.

Hayward nodded and grinned. “All right," he said. "What, exactly, are you feeling?”

Dale lifted his eyebrows—it was a fascinating question, one he had yet to answer, and the challenge enticed him. For a moment he chewed on it, wondering _how_ to answer; his brow furrowed. “It’s like...this place is familiar, but it’s not right. Little details. Things people are saying, relationships between them.” He stared off at the clock on the wall, hyper-aware of the _tick-tick-tick_ of the second hand as it completed its thirty-second rotation around the clock’s face. “It’s like I’m looking at the world through the viewfinder of a camera that isn’t level. Everything looks the same but it’s...off, somehow, relative to where I know the horizon line really is and where my centre of gravity is.” He paused, briefly. “But I don’t know if the world is tilted or if it’s me.”

Hayward listened intently, without judgment, and Dale allowed himself a small space to relax, momentarily content that at least the man in front of him believed him to be worthy of his attention.

“When I came out of the woods tonight, I expected more time to have passed than what actually did,” he blurted out suddenly.

Hayward straightened up, regarding Dale curiously. “How much time would you say is missing?” 

Dale swallowed. “As much as maybe twenty five years.”

At this, the doctor’s eyes went wide, but he kept himself in check. _Ever the professional,_ Dale thought to himself.

“That must have been a jarring realization,” Hayward said. “Could it have been a dream? Some effect from…wherever it was you went to?”

“Perhaps,” Dale agreed, though he doesn’t believe that’s true. “But I can’t shake the feeling that I’m not supposed to be here…that none of this is right.”

The elder man regarded the younger with curiosity and compassion yet said nothing. He walked slowly and deliberately around to the desk on the wall opposite, just below the time-less clock, and pushed a few pieces of paper around, seemingly at random, until Dale saw him produce a pen from beneath a stack of folders. “Well, let’s not jump to any conclusions.” he started slowly, reaching into his pocket for a prescription pad. He began writing. “I’m inclined to believe that this will all be remedied by rest. So I’m recommending that you take some time off from the work you’re doing. You’ve been through a trying ordeal. Sometimes we need a hard reset to make things make sense again.” He finished writing and tore off the paper on top, locking eyes with Dale. “Get plenty of sleep. Lay off the caffeine before bed. Meditate, if you’re so inclined. And if you’re not feeling better in a few days, we’ll reevaluate.” He handed Dale the piece of paper. “Does that sound okay to you?”

Dale took the slip and looked down at Doctor Hayward’s scribbled missive: _Relax_.

He smiled. “Yes. I’ll do that."

Hayward smiled. “Good.”

Dale stepped down off the examination table as Doctor Hayward reached for the door handle. 

“How’s Annie?” Dale asked suddenly, before feeling his blood run cold as he caught his mistake. 

Hayward, if he heard him, didn't let on. “What’s that?”

“Audrey,” Dale corrected himself. “How’s Audrey?”

The doctor nodded and smiled. “I was wondering when you’d ask that,” he said. “I haven’t been to see her but she’s in very capable hands.” He looked up at Dale. “I can take you to see her if you’d like."

Dale pondered the offer before shaking his head. “No, I think I’d better head home,” he said, and for the first time in a while, he wondered where that might be. “Do you know if I still have a room at the Great Northern?”

Hayward nodded initially and then shrugged his shoulders. “I suppose so, Agent Cooper. Can’t think of any reason why not.” He paused.  “But it won’t matter much for now though."

"Hm?" Dale asked.

“Well I’ve already spoken with Harry and he’s going to put you up for the night. I was going to admit you, but—”

“That’s really not necessary—”

“It’s already done,” Hayward replied. “You shouldn’t be unsupervised, in case anything happens." He nodded; it was, evidently, a done deal. "And if I’m being totally honest, it’s nice to see that you two have patched things up, so...”

Dale registered the odd comment but didn't say a word nor put up a fight. His fatigue made it hard for him to think at all, and those thoughts he did think were upsetting. So he simply shut his eyes and nodded, allowing Doctor Hayward to lead him down a meandering maze of dim hallways that Dale had to constantly remind himself belonged to the here-and-now, the real world, to Calhoun Memorial Hospital in the town of Twin Peaks, Washington...and not, as he feared, to the now-foggy half-world he hoped he’d never see again.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I owe a big debt of gratitude to steelneena, eccesapientia, and Erase Him In The White Silk for helping me--at various points--to beta this chapter and future ones. Couldn't have done it without you all!

Dale clutched the prescription paper in his hand the entire way home—“home” which was, for the night, the hide-a-bed in Sheriff Truman’s living room. 

But as he gripped that piece of paper, he found himself unable to do what it said.

_Relax_. 

It was easier said than done. The drive had taken them from the very centre of town outward towards the west and then north, past a trailer park and lonely stretches of highway before finally arriving at the base of Blue Pine Mountain, which is where Harry had built his home. With every second they drove away from civilization and back out into the forest, Dale felt his stomach clench a little more. As the two men finally pulled off the main highway and into the darkened driveway, he found himself wound tighter than a drum. 

Once upon a time, Dale had felt enchanted by the wilderness just outside Twin Peaks, but tonight the trees that had once given Dale such joy now stood as stark reminders of the place where it all came apart. He looked up at the Douglas firs and lodgepole pines and where once he might have seen sentinels guarding the inhabitants of this woodland hamlet, now he saw spectres blocking out the moon. He shivered.

Harry keys off the ignition. “Let’s get you inside."

Dale unbuckled the seatbelt as the sheriff rounded the truck and came up to the passenger door. Dale didn't think he needed help, but his legs felt weak as he stepped out into the soft, springy earth. Unable to find reliable purchase, he grabbed the sheriff’s shoulder and resigned himself to the assistance. 

Harry helped him around the front of the truck and up the two steps to the wraparound porch. The sheriff pushed the door open and the two men stepped inside, out of the chilled night air; Harry switched on the lights and the room glowed.

“Can I get you anything?” Harry asked as he strode into his space—and it _was_  wholly his space, Dale noted, looking around at the rugged decor that could only belong to a man like Sheriff Harry S Truman—and deposited his keys and wallet on a small shelf along the way. Dale watched him as he moved into the kitchen and shrugged off his jacket. “Water? Coffee? Er…maybe _not_ coffee…”

“A glass of water,” Dale replied as he took off his suit jacket and draped it over the back of a nearby armchair. He looked down and noticed his shirt—smudged with dirt and maybe a trace of blood, rumpled beyond what he’d normally feel comfortable in—but what struck him was its colour: a greenish-grey colour, unlike anything he could ever remember purchasing for himself. He rolled a fold of fabric between his thumb and forefinger.

“This isn’t my shirt,” he said absently.

“Hm?” Harry said as he stepped into the living room again, holding out a glass of ice water towards Dale. “What do you mean it’s not your shirt?”

Dale looked up and shook his head as he took the glass from his friend’s hand. “Harry, I’m not sure you’d believe me even if I told you.”

Harry sat down in the carved wooden rocking chair adjacent to the sofa. He had a glass of water of his own, and he took a long, deep pull before setting the glass down on the wooden side table and leaning forward, resting his elbows on his knees as he stared directly at Dale. 

“Try me."

Dale felt gritty fatigue in his eyes, and he didn't know what he was going to say anyway, but he figured he had to try. So, for the second time that night, he attempted to explain what was happening to him.

“None of this feels right,” he said. “Ever since I woke up, I feel like something is very wrong. Like I’m not where I’m supposed to be.”

It took the Sheriff a moment to process it. Dale didn't feel slighted; this was the careful consideration he’d come to expect from level-headed Harry. It was comforting that at least _that_ had stayed the same. 

“How d’you mean?”

Dale sighed and took a drink from the glass. The shocking cold of it made his throat hurt, but he relished the sensation, closing his eyes and leaning into it fully. When he set the glass down, he sighed and opened his eyes. “I don’t know what happened in there, but when I left Twin Peaks and went to the Waiting Room—because that’s what he called it, the Waiting Room—”

“What _who_ called it?”

“The dwarf.”

Truman nodded slowly. “The dwarf…”

“Remember I told you about the dwarf? MIKE? From my dream?” Dale asked. 

“You dreamt about Mike?” Harry asked. “Mike Nelson?”

Dale shook his head, chalking it up to confusion on the sheriff’s part. “MIKE…or maybe it wasn’t MIKE…maybe it was The Arm? I don’t know…” he sighed and scrubbed a hand over his face. “He was in the room with Laura Palmer when she told me who killed her, and he showed up _again_ after what happened to Josie…”

“Wait— _Laura Palmer_?” Harry asked. “Laura’s not dead though.”

Dale’s eyes snapped open, all traces of fatigue leaving him completely. “What?” 

The sheriff furrowed his brow. “She was released from the hospital weeks ago,” he said. “You don’t remember that?”

But Dale was still stuck on the bombshell declaration from moments earlier. He blinked and sat up straight. “That doesn’t make any sense.”

“What doesn’t?”

Dale shut his eyes and focused on the timeline he suddenly pictured in his mind; he visualized the months of the year stretching out in front of him, honed in on February, studied the numbers. “I arrived in Twin Peaks around noon on February twenty-fourth. I was brought here because of Ronette Pulaski—”

“Right,” Harry said.

Dale continued. “She’d wandered across the state line into Idaho on the railroad tracks, which is why the whole thing landed on my desk in the first place—the attack on Ronette, the murder of Laura Palmer—”

“Okay,” Harry interrupted again. “You’ve got that backwards. _Ronette Pulaski_ was killed. _Laura_ was attacked but she survived.”

Dale shook his head. “It can’t be."

Harry opened his hands and shrugged. “I don’t know what to tell you, Coop. That’s what it is.”

“But what about Leland?”

Harry’s eyes turned cold. “What about him?”

“He killed her.”

“We know. He’s awaiting trial for Ronette’s murder as we speak…”

Dale felt panic rising in his throat. “No. No, that’s not right. Leland murdered _Laura_. We solved her murder together, you and me. He murdered Teresa Banks, he murdered Laura, he murdered Maddy, and then he died,” Dale said. “You were there, Harry! You and Albert. Leland died in my arms. We watched him die.”

Harry leaned further into the gap between them and reached out to put a hand on Dale’s knee. Dale supposed that it was meant to defuse the situation, keep things calm. But it had the opposite effect. He felt crazier than ever. 

“Coop,” Harry said. “What’s really going on here?”

“I don’t know…” he admitted, leaning back against the sofa cushions. “Where did BOB go?”

“Bob?” Harry shook his head. “Bobby? Bobby Briggs?”

Dale felt his blood run cold. “BOB, the malevolent spirit entity that resided in Leland Palmer? The one who dwells in the Black Lodge?”

Harry shook his head. “Dale,” he said; it was the first time that Dale could remember the sheriff using his first name like that. “Calm down for a moment, okay? Have another drink of water. We’ll sort this out.”

Dale did as he was told, or tried to at least, resting his hands on his knees and exhaling around the lump in his throat.  “I think something very strange has happened here…”

“And if you’d like to fill me in on what that is, I’d really appreciate it.”

Dale didn't know how to react. He was gripped by fear and confusion, and there was no one to turn to to help him unravel it. He bounced his knee, a nervous tic he’d never had before but which felt compulsory now, like if he didn’t do it he’d cease to exist at all, so intrinsic was it to his being. 

“I feel like I’m losing my mind,” he said. “Like I walked through the curtains—I was there for years, Harry, I swear to you. I was an old man. And now I get out but it’s not the same place I left when I went in. It’s like I went between…”

_Between two worlds…_

The realization hit Dale with such force that he nearly had the wind knocked out of him completely. He remembered his double, the one who cackled maniacally and chased him down, the one who left the Lodge first…

_I don’t belong here._

_I took someone else’s place._

Harry let out a sigh that brought Cooper back to reality. “Look, Coop, I know things came to a head between us over Laura, and again over Audrey, but—”

Dale didn't bother correcting the Sheriff— _We never fought about Laura, or Audrey,_ he wants to say—but instead just turned to him and shook his head. “Harry, those conversations you’re talking about might have happened but they didn’t happen with me.”

Harry stared at him in disbelief. “I’m gonna need more to go on than that, because from where I stand you sound like you just dove off the deep end.”

The idea that he was crazy resurfaced, briefly, but Dale ignored it. He was utterly consumed by the thought that maybe something far more damaging had taken place.

“If we solved the murder I was called here for,” Dale began, “Why haven’t I gone back to Philadelphia? Why am I still here?”

Harry leaned back in his chair and scrubbed a hand over the day-old stubble on his jaw. “Audrey Horne was investigating the links between Laura and Ronette and ended up at One Eyed Jack’s across the border. She got herself in deep and was held for ransom. You ’n me, we went up there and rescued her. But your actions caused trouble with Internal Affairs, and we discovered a massive plot to frame you—”

“By Jean Renault,” Dale offered. “He held me personally responsible for the murders of his brothers Jacques and Bernard, and he planted cocaine in my vehicle, necessitating an investigation by the DEA and Agent Bryson, who helped us uncover the plot as well.”

Harry shook his head. “Not exactly. Jean was behind it all—the cocaine, Audrey’s kidnapping—and it’s true that Bernard is dead, but Jacques is still alive. At least the last time we heard—he fled across the border the night of the mill fire. We think he was probably the one to shoot Leo, to cover the fact that he and Leo were the last ones to see Ronette alive…although we later realized that they had nothing to do with her death.”

Running on fumes, Dale felt he could fall asleep at any minute and stay asleep for several hours. But the line of inquiry was bearing fruit, and he couldn't stop himself. “And my ex-partner, Windom Earle?”

Harry nodded. “As we were getting to the bottom of the Renault set-up, Windom Earle started to come up.”

“And he blames me for the death of his wife?”

Again, Harry nodded.

“Was he looking for the entrance to the Black Lodge?”

This time the sheriff narrowed his eyes. “Now, that's the second time you’ve brought that up tonight. How did you hear about the Black Lodge?”

“You and Hawk told me about it,” Dale insisted. “After Major Briggs told me about the White Lodge, the night he went missing—”

Harry seemed dumbstruck. “You were with Major Briggs the night he went missing?”

“We had gone camping. Night fishing out on Pearl Lakes.”

“You never told me that.”

Dale tried to stay focused. He closed his eyes and mentally catalogued the similarities and differences between the world he remembered and the world he was currently inhabiting; the calendar he'd previously envisioned was replaced by words and images, things he remembered on the right and things that didn't add up on the left. Distantly, he heard Harry recounting the Major’s disappearance, and how when he returned days later, he shut himself up in his home and refused to take visitors, except for his wife and his son:

“He’s working on some top secret military thing, I don’t know—” Harry trailed off.

But Dale wasn't really paying attention. He sat up straight and focused, cutting the sheriff off mid-sentence. “Harry, if I told you that the place with the red curtains, the Waiting Room, was a portal between worlds linked to the Lodges. A portal that led to unimaginable power that Windom Earle was trying to harness for his own purposes. And that I entered that portal in _another_ place and time, with Annie Blackburne—who is Norma's sister—but exited _here_ , in the woods, with Audrey Horne instead…would you believe me?”

Harry said nothing for several seconds. He considered Dale, searching his face for answers to questions he hadn’t asked yet. 

“A portal between worlds?” he asked. “Like time travel?”

Dale shrugged. “Maybe. I’m not sure. Harry, I remember things that you claim have never happened…and you’re telling me things that I _swear_ never happened. And in both instances, in my mind, those things that never happened happened two decades ago…”

Harry looked down at the ground and for another long moment not a word was spoken.

_This is lunacy_ …Dale thought to himself. 

At the same time, he knew he’d seen weirder. But he wasn't the one to worry about; what had Harry seen, and would he believe him? 

“I don’t know what kind of relationship you feel you have with me, but the Sheriff Truman I know, from the place I come from, trusted me with his life, and I trust him with mine,” Dale said. 

“I know,” Harry replied. “And I feel the same way. In spite of everything.”

“You believe me then?” 

“Well, I mean… _god,_ Coop,” Harry said, once again running a hand over his chin. “Portals and spirits in the woods? Are you sure this isn’t all because of what happened? Where you went?”

“I think that’s _exactly_ what it is!” 

“No, I mean…maybe it’s an after-effect. From the stress. Maybe you oughta sleep it off and see how you feel in the morning.”

Dale shut his eyes and once more felt around for a section of his shirt to hold. “Harry, this isn’t _my_ shirt. _I_ never bought this shirt. This is _another_ Agent Cooper’s shirt.”

Harry held up a hand. “Okay,” he said, nodding slowly, chewing his words. “ _If_ that’s true…where is this _other_ Agent Cooper now?”

It was a thought that had already begun to fester, and Agent Cooper didn’t like any of the conclusions that he had drawn from it. “I don’t know,” he admitted, tears filling his eyes. “But there’s a possibility that he’s wearing my shirt, in my world, with my friends—with Annie—and I’m wearing his, here, with you and everyone he knew…”

When he looked up at the sheriff, he didn't bother to conceal the fact that he was crying, and Harry again reached out for Cooper’s knee.

“Look,” he said. “It’s been a trying ordeal. For all of us. Let’s put a pin in this and hit the sack, okay? Tomorrow we can pick up right where we left off. We can talk to Hawk, we can visit Audrey…”

Dale blinked and let the tears fall. “I don’t want to sleep, Harry. I know I need to but I’m afraid…I’m afraid…”

He felt the sheriff’s hand on his knee as the sheriff gave him a reassuring squeeze. “Nothing is going to happen to you if you go to sleep, Dale. Not on my watch.” 

“Harry, these are forces beyond our reckoning.”

“Well, they’ll have to get through me first.”

It was a lame promise—Dale knew this—and yet it was still a comforting thought. When Dale opened his eyes and saw the steady look on Harry’s face, despite everything and for the first time that night, he was able to do exactly what Doc Hayward prescribed. A wave of relief followed, and he nodded his head in tired assent, suddenly secure in the belief that Sheriff Truman was his champion.

“Now, let me rustle up a pillow and a blanket for you,” Harry said, standing up tall. 

“Can I take a shower?” 

Harry nodded. “First door on your left,” he said, pointing down the hallway.

Dale thanked him silently, with a brief nod of his head, and slowly made his way to the bathroom, where he showered for the first time—in his mind—in over two decades. The hot steam, running water, the scent of Harry’s soap and shampoo, all mingled and mixed around him, a soothing balm for his weary soul. 

When he emerged from the bathroom, he found that Harry has made up the hide-a-bed with what appeared to be all the mismatched pieces of bed linens that he could find: white fitted sheet, pinkish floral top sheet, pale blue and green striped pillow case. Not that it mattered to Dale; he smiled, softly and a bit drunkenly, at the simple grandiosity of the sheriff’s gesture in the first place— _We fought over something, and it was serious enough for everyone to know about it, and yet he still puts me up for the night_ , Dale thought as he padded into the living room, towel around his shoulders; he was wearing only his boxers.

There was a large, plain, black t-shirt on the pillow. Dale slipped it over his head and let it fall, and felt entirely dwarfed by the fabric, like a boy playing dress-up in his father’s closet. He knew it wasn't—the shirt couldn't have possibly been  _that_ big—but he _wanted_ it to be, because being a boy playing dress-up was a damn sight better than floundering as an adult with no one to guide him and no idea where to go. 

Beneath the shirt was a note, scribbled in Harry’s handwriting. 

_Coffee’s ready to go, in case you wake up first. Just push the button. —Harry_

Dale nodded and set the note down on the table where both glasses of ice water now sat side-by-side in a growing puddle of condensation. He wiped it up with the towel before bringing the glasses back to the kitchen and returning the towel to a hook in the bathroom. 

Then he sat on the edge of the bed, sinking into the mattress. It had been so long since he'd slept in a bed. It had been so long since he _slept_. He didn't remember sleeping at all in the red room. He remembered his own experiments with sleep deprivation as a young boy, and shook his head.  _Surely you didn’t actually go twenty five years with no sleep?_ he asked himself as he leaned against the sofa’s backrest.  _Maybe this_ is _just stress?_ _Maybe you’ll wake up in the morning and all of this will feel okay again…_

The warmth from his shower had begun to dissipate and he felt a damp chill creep into his skin. So he scooted down and tucked himself beneath the sheet, unfolding the familiar striped wool blanket—a Hudson Bay point blanket, an artifact from the explorers and fur trading days on this half of the continent and a reminder of exactly which part of the world he's in—and pulling it over himself as he slid down and rested his head on the pillow. 

_Harry is just down the hall. You’re here now. You’re safe. Nothing is going to happen to you._

It was comforting until exactly the moment it wasn't, but by that point his fatigue had won and was waiting for his body to admit it. That didn't take long. Within minutes, even as he worried about waking up to find the rough-hewn log cabin had transformed itself into the deep red folds of those awful curtains and that he’d been sent back to the Waiting Room, Dale slipped into a blissfully dreamless slumber. 


	4. Chapter 4

When Dale awoke, his first instinct was to panic. The room was bathed in a ruddy glow, and from behind sleep-filled eyes, it was difficult to tell where he was. But he knew where he _thought_ he was, and that was all the worse. With his heart beating in his ears and lodged somewhere beneath his Adam’s apple, he darted his eyes around the dimly lit room, searching for an anchor point.

He found it in the curtains on the window to his left; more precisely, it was the window itself that registered. The drapes pulled across them were patterned vertically in stripes of orange and brown and red, and the light shining through them was what gave the room its colour.

He was not, as he feared, in the Red Room. He was in Sheriff Truman’s living room, and it was morning.

Dale heard the water running in the shower. There was a clanging in the pipes along the wall as the baseboard heaters kicked in, soon to relieve the room of its slight chill. The whole place smelled of pine needles and coffee, the latter of which he could hear being brewed in the drip machine on the counter in the kitchen. From the warmth of his cocoon beneath the blankets, Dale felt immense relief. He settled back against the pillow and shut his eyes, preparing to let himself fall back into slumber once again.

But he was interrupted by the sound of footfalls in the hallway. Cracking one eye open, he spotted a woman in a long dressing down round the corner into the kitchen. She busied herself with making toast, and poured a cup of coffee as the maker finished brewing.

From behind, it wasn’t easy to tell who she was. But it wasn’t like he had to make a tremendous leap to get there.

 _You’re supposed to be dead,_ he thought as he sat up.

“Josie?” he asked, his voice laced with sleep and foggy on account.

The woman turned to face him, smiling broadly as she did. “Good morning, Agent Cooper,” Josie replied. “Did you have a good sleep?”

“It was…it was fine,” he managed to answer. “H-how are you?”

“I’m well, thank you,” she answered, dipping her head in a little nod as she turned back to the counter to retrieve a coffee mug from the cupboard above it. “Can I get you a mug of joe?”

He nodded, watching as Josie rummaged for a mug. After a moment, she turned around, still expecting his answer; Dale hadn’t realized that the only answer he’d offered was a non-verbal one. “Sure,” he countered, feeling a blush rise in his cheeks.

 _Get a grip,_ he admonished himself. _You know things are weird. They don’t. Relax…_

“Do you still take it black?”

 _Do I?_ he wondered. _How do I forget this?_

“Yes, I do,” he answered. Josie picked up the mug and walked it over to him. He pushed himself up until he was sitting properly, and graciously accepted her offering, but he stared at her face a little longer than might have been considered appropriate.

Josie, alarmed, brought a hand to her face. “Do I have something—?”

Dale shook his head. “No,” he reassured her. “Not at all, it’s just…I wasn’t expecting to see you.”

She relaxed and parked herself in the same rocking chair Harry had sat in the night before. “Ever since I lost the mill, there was no reason for me to stay with Catherine and Pete,” she said. “Harry insisted. I didn’t see why not. The town knows about us now anyway…”

Dale took his first sip from the cup, and as the scalding brew invaded his mouth, he couldn’t help but smile. “Delicious coffee, Josie.”

“You can thank Harry for that.”

“I’m sure I will,” he said, setting the mug down on the side table.

“So what are your plans for the day?” Josie asked.

Dale shook his head; he honestly didn’t know. “That’s a good question.”

Josie picked up the prescription paper from the table before setting her own mug down. She read it and grins. “Well, I’d hate to be repetitious but…” she handed him the paper. “You should do what the doctor ordered.”

Dale nodded. “Perhaps,” he said. “But there is work to be done, and—”

“And time enough to do it in,” Harry’s voice sounded from the hallway as he stepped into the kitchen. “You, sir, are relieved of duty until you’re well.”

It sounded like a command. Dale bristled. “Well, I feel I ought to be doing something productive.”

Harry turned around, a mug of his own in his hand. “Start a puzzle,” he said and Dale can’t tell if he’s serious or joking.

As the two men squared off—however gently—Josie stood up and took her coffee with her. “I’m going to go get ready for my day,” she said, walking over to Harry and kissing him on the cheek. “Behave, boys?”

Dale shook his head and looked down at the coffee cup as Josie walked off down the hallway. Moments later, he heard the shower running again. It was then that he chose to pick up the discussion of how he should spend his day.

“Harry, I just don’t think I can ride the pine after what’s happened.”

“I’m not asking you to bow out completely,” Harry said. “I want to give you all the support and resources you need to figure this out. You can have an office at the station house. You can have access to our library and databases. Anything you need. But you’re gonna take ‘er easy either way.”

‘Taking it easy’ was not something that Dale had programmed into his DNA. All the same, he nodded. “I appreciate that Harry, but where do I even start?”

“How do we begin any investigation?” Harry asked as he walked across the living room and to the front door, where he retrieved a copy of the newspaper wedged into the wooden mailbox on the porch. With a casual glance he tossed the paper to the table beside the door. “You start where you can and go where the road leads, I suppose.”

Dale nodded. He had already begun to swing his legs out of bed when he realized how much his body craved the sleep he’d been roused from by the morning light through the curtains. For a moment, he considered indulging. But, ever the creature of momentum, his legs continued their trajectory and before he knew it he had both feet firmly planted on the ground. _You can sleep when you’re dead,_ he thought to himself with a yawn.

“Let me make breakfast,” Harry offered. “Eggs, toast, bacon—the works.”

“Sounds fine,” Dale said as he stood and stretched. While Harry began prep in the kitchen, Dale walked over to the retrieve the newspaper. His eyes skimmed the page. Like any of the small town papers that Dale has come across in his time as an agent, this one featured lengthy local interest stories and not much else, but there was a rustic charm to it that Dale had always admired, and reading any paper with a morning cup of coffee was a simple pleasure he’d long forgotten about. Holding it in his hands, he smiled. It seemed like ages since he’d felt newsprint beneath his fingertips.

It was only when he sat back down on the edge of the bed that he noticed the name of the paper: the Twin Peaks _Post_. 

_That’s not right…_

“Harry…didn’t this used to be called the _Gazette_?”

Harry turned around from his place at the stove, where several strips of bacon sat sputtering in a cast iron pan. “The _Gazette_? God, it hasn’t been the _Gazette_ since…oh, man, nineteen seventy at least.”

Dale looked at the paper and shook his head. “One more thing that doesn’t add up,” he mutters to himself.

“You remember it being the _Gazette_?”

Dale nodded. “I’m sure of it.”

Harry forks the thick slices of bacon and pushes them around the pan. The room fills with the scent of it. “Well hell, if that don’t beat all…"

Dale was suddenly struck with an idea. “I think that’s what I’m going to do,” he said. 

“How’s that?”

“I’m gonna write it all down, every last bit of it,” he said. “The things I remember. The things that are different. This newspaper…Annie…Laura…Josie…”

Harry dropped the fork against the edge of the pan. “All right, level with me Cooper,” Harry said, turning around to face Dale. “What happened to Josie?”

Dale suddenly sat up straight and lifted the hem of the t-shirt to expose his lower stomach. He saw the jagged scar from the knife wound, sustained during his attack in Pittsburgh. There next to it, was the scar from the bullet wound, still tender and healing over from when he'd been shot.

_By Josie_.

He took a breath and prepared to speak, but suddenly didn’t know what to say. He couldn’t tell Harry that Josie was dead in this other world, and that her death had come about as a direct result of a chain of events that, in her mind at least, he had started with his arrival in town. But he had brought her up, cryptically, twice already in _this_ world, and Harry wasn’t going to settle for anything less than a truthful answer now.

_Lies by omission aren’t really lies, are they?_ he asked himself. But he knew he was playing jumprope with a fine line.  _Okay, Harry, you asked..._

“She shot me, Harry,” he said finally, touching the entry point in his stomach and lifting the hem of his shirt just a little for Harry to see. “Point blank. Because I was getting too close to figuring out what she was up to…”

Harry's face was stone-silent for several long seconds before he began to laugh. “What she was up to?” Harry asked. “Christ, Coop, Josie doesn’t even know how to hold a gun, let alone shoot someone with it.”

Dale glanced off down the hallway at the closed bathroom door. “I need time to figure this out, Harry,” he said. “But I promise you, you’ll be the first to know what I find.”

Harry stopped laughing but retained the devilish smirk on his face. "Sorry, Coop. I shouldn't have laughed. I don't mean to be...well, _mean_." He considered Dale, studied him. "You really got shot then?"

Dale nodded. "I did. And it was really Josie.  _My_ Josie. From  _my_ world."

Harry shook his head. "Well if that don't just beat all..." Still h e pointed the fork in his hand at Dale and smiled. “I still like you,” he said, turning back to the stovetop. “Maybe we’ve had our differences, but I like you.”

Dale laughed a little to himself. _The feeling’s mutual, friend_ , he though, suddenly wondering where _his_ Sheriff Truman was, if he was making breakfast for the other Agent Cooper.

_Or maybe the other Me is with Annie…if she even made it out._

The thought gave him chills and sent a pang of desperate longing straight to his gut. 

He was worried about her. And he missed her.

Even though they forced Dale to redouble his efforts and hone his focus, he pushed all thoughts of Annie to the side as Harry turned to face him from the kitchen.

“On our way to the station,” he started, “I think we’d better make a stop at the hospital, check in on Audrey. Hawk couldn’t get a hold of her parents last night. It wouldn’t surprise me if they didn’t know she was there, to be quite honest with you…”

Dale nodded. “I’d very much like to see her, too. I wanted to last night, but…”

Harry cast Dale a sideways glance and chuckled. “I bet you did…”

Dale ignored the odd comment but logged it for later. There would be time to figure out the subtext; for now, there were more pressing matters at hand, a half-finished cup of coffee being the first.

Second…

“Harry, you think we can stop at the Great Northern on the way too?” he asked, touching the muddy and rumpled edge of his suit jacket. “I think I’m gonna need a change of clothes…”


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay, but I really wondered whether or not I should even continue this story from this point onward because things get kind of squicky and I know how sensitive people are and I *really* don't want to offend anyone...I really hope I haven't!

At first glance, Dale’s room at the hotel was, oddly, pretty much exactly as he had left it. He wasn’t sure why that fact surprised him so much, but it did.   
  
Perhaps it was the fact that, for so long— _Twenty five years, he thought_ —he truly believed he’d never see it again.   
  
And it _had_ felt like twenty five years. So there was that, too.   
  
In reality, it had been less than forty-eight hours since he’d last been in this room, but in his mind two decades had passed. The room shouldn’t still be there. His _things_ shouldn’t still be there.   
  
But there they were, exactly as he’d left them.   
  
And yet…   
  
Stepping across the threshold, he looked around at his possessions—the meagre assortment of items that he’d packed with him when he left Philadelphia—and noticed little things that were different, that didn’t seem to add up. Books he didn’t remember bringing with him sat untouched on the desk. His shirts—some white, some blue, but an alarming array of other colours, off-white and tan and pale pinks and greens too, hues he would never buy himself—hung nestled together amongst his suits in the small closet. The TV remote control was on the bed, as if having been tossed there after being used; Dale didn’t remember watching TV once in the entire time he’d been in Twin Peaks.   
  
This was the room of _another_ Dale Cooper. An alternate one. Dale was more certain of that than ever as he took up a position at the end of the bed. The clothes he would change into were the clothes of a different him. They would fit the same. But they wouldn’t be his. And that thought was jarring.   
  
He wanted another shower, and glanced at the bedside alarm clock; there was just enough time if he was really quick about it, and he knew he could be. He removed his shirt, dirty from the forest floor, and was just about to start on his belt buckle when a knock at the door called his attention away.   
  
He froze and neither did nor said anything, but eventually his curiosity bested his suspicion. “Just a minute!” he said as he grabbed a fresh dress shirt from off the hangers by the door. He had only started to button it when he reached for the door handle, intending to peek at his visitor and nothing more. “Sorry, I was just—”   
  
In an instant, the door was pushed open and Dale was beset by a pair of arms around his neck as a woman several inches shorter than him launched herself into the room.   
  
“Oh my god…I’m so happy to see you’re okay!”   
  
Confused, Dale returned the embrace but said nothing; in fact, nothing but a short series of garbled noises were all he could manage. She was petite but clung to him, wet wool around his shoulders. She smelled faintly of Ivory soap and the cold air outside; she was cold, too, as though she’d just come in from outside, and he felt the chill of her skin as she pressed her cheek into his shoulder. Her hair was blonde, and long, and the ends of it brushed against his fingertips as he soothed a hand up her back guided by instinct and a strong desire to protect.   
  
When she finally pulled away, for a moment Dale registered her face without internal commentary—such was her omnipresence in his life for so many weeks that seeing her caused no stirrings at all apart from the most casual of recognizance. But, as the moment stretched on and he saw her pale skin, the brightness of her eyes staring back at him from beneath the fringe of her lashes and her blonde hair above that, the line of her lips curving upwards into a smile that he’d seen so many times he was certain he could conjure it perfectly from memory, he gave a start, and took a step back.   
  
“Laura?”   
  
She cocked her head to the side. “Of course it’s me, silly,” she grinned at him, her lips parting wide to reveal her perfectly straight teeth before bashfully averting her gaze. Dale stared at her, petrified. For some reason, the idea of Laura being alive had never translated into her actually _being_ alive; he never thought he’d actually _see_ her. He certainly never expected to see her _in his room_. And when she stepped into the space he’d vacated, he knew he could never have predicted that she would lift her arms onto his shoulders, lock her hands behind his neck, and press herself against the length of him with uncomfortable familiarity.   

She blinked slowly and lifted her eyes to his, leaning back from the pivot point of their joined pelvises. “Unless you’re in the habit of inviting other girls up to your room on a regular basis…”  
  
Then she kissed him.  
  
Dazed by his own horror, Dale was rooted to the floor and slow to react. His mind whirled— _You’re dead. You’re supposed to be dead. The last time I saw you was before your post-mortem examination. We buried you. Your father killed you and we buried you…_ —and even though he knew that the reality he was referencing was not _this_ reality, he couldn’t reconcile the fact that he was actually standing there with Laura Palmer’s lips soft and warm against his own. Not when his own reality dictated that she shouldn’t be there at all.  
  
A strange vibration cocooned him as she pushed forward, molding her body to his in the intimate way partners are wont to do and pushing him back towards the bed as she did so. It was all mildly unsettling: her movements, the buzzing, the worrying arousal he felt as Laura’s lips parted for him. It had been so long since he’d been with a woman, and yet the sensation felt—again, worryingly—comforting and warm. He desired nothing more than to fall into it, letting it encompass him completely, and for a moment he forgot whose hands were sliding down from his neck, running roughshod over his chest, landing against his belt buckle…  
  
He suddenly dizzied, his head cotton ball fuzzy as he once again felt himself listing to one side. In a panic, he shot his hand out to grab something, anything, to steady himself; it was the bed post that he grasped. Fortified, he lifted his other hand and braced it against Laura’s shoulder, pushing her back from him.   
  
“What are you doing?”  
  
Laura looked wounded; she half-blinked her eyes and frowned. “Dale, what’s wrong with you?” she asked—smirking ever-so-slightly and making him feel like an embarrassed teenager being publicly shamed by his crush in front of the whole school.   
  
The back of his knee collided with the bed frame and mattress behind him; he nearly toppled back onto the bed.  
  
“How did you get here?”  
  
“I drove,” she said. “How else would I get here? What kind of a question is that?”  
  
_Not the right one_ , he thought. But he wasn’t thinking, not very well anyway. He barely had time to process her words—his mind on fire, still processing the fact that she was here, she was alive—and she was already sliding into his arms again as this time he did fall back against the bed.  
  
“Laura, Laura…” Dale said as he pushed her away once again, sliding her off his knee until she stood in front of him. “This is…no, this can’t…we can’t…”  
  
Laura's demeanour changed with head-spinning alacrity. Her eyes flashed, hardening like coal as she set her lips in a firm line. For the briefest of seconds, Dale remembered how she looked the very last time he saw her— _days ago? Weeks? Maybe only hours…_ —in the Red Room: mouth snarled, eyes aflame, howls of rage ripped from her vocal cords. He swallowed hard.   
  
“It’s _her_ , isn't it?” she spat. “You went after _her_ and now you don’t want _me_ anymore…”  
  
Dale shook his head and tried—and failed—to find the words to express what he was thinking. _What could you possibly say?_ But he couldn’t accept the premise of the statement: Who was she even talking about? _  
_  
As she stood against the wall, her eyes downcast, Dale took the opportunity to study her, thinking it would help to calm his racing heart and confused mind. Her face, he noticed, carried scars from, presumably, the night of Ronette's murder. There was a shiny pink mark above her eye, new skin healed over what would have been a substantial wound; her lower lip was pocked, with indications of stitches that had long since been removed but which had, once, sewn together another terrific gash there. If he had been paying proper attention when she had first walked in, he would have noticed a slight limp, but even standing as she was—leaning against the wall beside his bed—he noticed she was heavily favouring her left ankle, and surmised that she had probably suffered a sprain or tear to her right one that hadn’t fully healed yet.  
  
He catalogued her injuries, made his deductions, and approached her with the eyes of an FBI Agent assigned to her case. She ceased to be Dead Girl Laura Palmer in his mind; but the moment her eyes flicked up to his, he couldn’t help but feel his heart in his throat. The realness of her was too much to take.  
  
It was the second time that day that he'd had a back-from-the-dead fright, but this one had shaken him to the core. Not only because of who she was, but now also because the clear breach of ethics and the boundary-crossing boldness of her greeting left little to the imagination, and Dale, for all his upright goodness and rule-following, could scarcely believe that he'd done what he suspected himself of doing.  
  
_Not me_ , he thought. _It wasn't me._  
  
But how could he explain that to this girl? This girl whose dead body had been his first introduction to the town, after the Douglas firs? This girl whose diaries—both of them—he'd read cover to cover, and not just once but several times? This girl whose secrets he knew? This girl, whose death had been his sole reason for being here in the first place, and who now stood in front of him not only fully alive but fully knowable?

_In more ways than one..._   
  
Dale's stomach clenched thinking about how his alter-self had violated Laura, her trust and her youth. He wanted to throw up.   
  
It was only a small consolation to him that this Laura may have been very different indeed from the Laura who died in his world, with a different history, different dreams and desires. But how was he going to know? How could he possibly find that out?   
  
He settled on a truth, the only one that made sense to him: the truth of what he wanted. And even though he knew it was the right and moral thing to do, he felt selfish for thinking it, for opening his mouth and saying it.

“I think you should you go now.”   
  
"You want me to go,” Laura said, not asking it–stating it, a fact. “That’s not what you used to say. You never told me to go before. You wouldn’t _want_ me to go…”   
  
He nodded and swallowed, again, his tongue thick and dry in his mouth. "I-I think it's for the best."   
  
Laura nodded, the coy smile returning to her face. "Okay Dale,” she said, and it felt like a put-on, an act; like he was a paying customer and she was putting on a show, sultry and confident. But he could tell she was disappointed that her charms weren’t working, and for all his know-how he had no idea how to respond to that.   
  
So he didn’t. He just waited, watching as the coquette melted away and she became herself again. Just Laura. She tucked her hair behind her left ear, took a breath, and continued. “I just...I wanted to see with my own eyes that you were okay. That you'd come back.”   
  
She sounded like she meant it, but Dale had no idea what was what anymore. All he knew was that she was achingly beautiful in real life, more beautiful than he could have ever imagined from the photos and videos he had seen her in before, and when she took his hand in hers and pressed a kiss to the back of his knuckles, the stirring he felt in his pit of his stomach brought a shameful blush to his cheeks that he hadn’t felt since the last time he’d kissed Annie Blackburn…   
  
"I'll see you later," she whispered, backing up to the wall again and holding his eyes for a brief moment before turning and walking from the room, leaving Dale–his shirt unbuttoned, his hair rumpled from sleep and slicked into a manageable if poor facsimile of his regularly careful style–a stymied and upset mess on the edge of the bed.   
  
It took him a full five minutes to regain control of himself and his senses, but when he did the only thing he could think of was that he needed to shower, out of physical as well as emotional necessity. He felt dirty and uncomfortable, having spent far longer than he ever should have imagining Laura in his bed. The question of whether the Laura that existed in this world was the same Laura who fell victim to the machinations of an abusive father and a malevolent spirit entity, or whether she was some different iteration without that baggage, had fallen by the wayside; it simply didn’t matter, because as far as he was concerned, Laura Palmer was off-limits.   
  
But as much as he didn’t want to return to those thoughts, he could imagine a poorer version of himself—one that he had tucked away far down in the deepest and darkest part of his being—a version of himself who would have absolutely wanted it. Who would have gone after it, sought it out, and taken her. Who would have relished her nearness. Who would have used every last bit of knowledge gleaned from the private pages of her diary to give her what she had always wanted.   
  
Dale knew that this part of him existed, and he hated it.   
  
Half of his shower was spent with his head against the wall, dry-heaving beneath the water’s spray, on account.   
  
But the shower was restorative, and for a moment, Dale was able to compartmentalize his anxiety. He towelled off and dressed quickly—a powder blue shirt beneath a crisp black suit and tie—styling his hair and running his electric razor over the day’s worth of stubble on his chin. Half an hour after he told Harry he'd meet him in the lobby, he stepped out of the elevator on the main floor.   
  
Dale tried to push his thoughts away from the surface, preventing them from creasing his face with worry, but knew he was failing miserably as the scowl spread.   
  
"What took you so long?" Truman asked with a grin.   
  
Tension knit his brows together, and even though he worked hard to smooth it away, the sheriff’s shifted demeanour indicated that he'd read Dale's face, and knew that something was wrong.

"What happened?"

“Harry?” Dale began. "You need to tell me exactly what went on between me and Laura Palmer. And you need to tell me _now_..." 


	6. Chapter 6

"It started after she got out of the hospital," Harry said, taking a nervous sip from the to-go coffee cup Shelly had filled to the brim only moments before.    
  
They were sitting in the cab of Harry's truck, parked in the back of the Double R, away from the prying eyes of the diner patrons and staff as the breakfast rush died down and the mid-morning lull set in. Dale stared straight ahead through the windshield at the forested area in front of the truck. He couldn’t bring himself to drink the coffee in his hand.   
  
" _What_ started?"   
  
"Your relationship with Laura," Harry said with a casual shrug. "However brief it may have been."   
  
Dale cringed at the word ‘relationship’, swallowing and rotating his cup in his hand to distract himself. "Is this what we fought about?” he asked. “You and me?”   
  
Harry nodded and took another sip, slow in his reply. "Yeah."   
  
Dale shook his head. "Harry, I’m telling you…I’ve never been with Laura. In my mind, she’s been dead for a month now.” He felt the same angst from before as it rose up in his chest, and he fought hard to tamp it down; he didn’t know how much more of this he could take. “I don’t know what this other Dale Cooper was up to, or what his motives were but—”   
  
“Hey, Coop,” Harry said. “I don’t know what you think this ‘other Cooper’ was, but he wasn’t a bad guy. He was righteous and upstanding and he fell in love—or lust, or what-have-you—with a girl half the town has been in love with for years anyway. It's hardly the worst thing we'd seen, at least in recent memory.”    
  
The cavalier attitude surprised Dale; he didn't know what to make of it. “Does that make it right?” Dale asked. “‘Everyone else is doing it so why shouldn’t I?’ Someone has to hold the moral high ground, and I always thought it was me.”   
  
“Yeah, well,” Harry said as he ran his thumb over the rim of the coffee lid, swiping at beads of coffee leftover on the lip from his last sip. “This is all a little hard to get my mind around."

Dale closed his eyes and rested his head against the headrest. "I know."

The lull in the conversation didn’t last long. “My point is, the Cooper I know is not so different from the Cooper sitting beside me right now. I have no reason to distrust you because I had no reason to distrust him, and the same holds true for however many more of you there are out there." Harry said finally. 

"That's kind of you, Harry," Dale said. "But  _my_ point is that I can't trust myself. Not without knowing the full extent of what happened here, between us, between me and Laura... _everything_."   
  
Harry exhaled heavily. "Well, I'm not privy to all the details, but I know there were a few…dates, I guess. Dinner. Coffee. A movie at the Bijou.” He shrugged. "I know that's not what you mean but..."   
  
"No, that's okay," Dale said, thinking about the way Laura had come into his room not an hour before, the way she’d kissed him. It wasn’t much of a leap to imagine the rest.   
  
Harry paused, again, to collect his thoughts before speaking. "I saw you two in the elevator once," he said. "Early morning, maybe ten days ago. I got...suspicious."   
  
"I can imagine."   
  
Harry nodded. "We exchanged words. It was tense for a while. I believe that's when you were also starting up with Audrey, if you hadn't already been–"   
  
Dale whipped around to face the Sheriff. "Audrey?" he demanded.   
  
"Yeah," Harry said again.   
  
It suddenly made perfect, crystal clear sense—the strange comments from Doc Hayward, Audrey’s use of his first name the night before, and Laura’s spitting comment, still blazing along his auditory nerve.    
_   
You went after her... _   
  
"What could he have possibly been thinking?” Dale whispered. “Laura _and_ Audrey?”   
  
Harry shrugged. “Look, you’d been under a lot of stress. There was the threat from your ex-partner," he sighed. “We work in a profession that demands a lot from us, and leaves little leeway for mistakes. It can grate on a person. I mean, things with Josie and me started up much the same–“ he paused, holding back for a moment before reasserting his position. “It’s not the first time a law enforcement officer has gotten tangled up in the life of someone whose case he was working on."   
  
Dale absently rubbed his hand across his stomach, above the knife wound scar. "It's not even the first time for me," he said. "Although I promised myself I wouldn't, ever again. Apparently this Dale did not—"   
  
“They’re both beautiful girls, Laura and Audrey. Beautiful and young and vital, and they were in trouble, and you were their protector. Their hero.”   
  
“That makes it worse,” Dale said. “Don’t you see that?”   
  
Harry shook his head. “No, I don’t see it that way.” 

There it was again: that permissiveness surrounding the Sheriff’s demeanour. It reminded him that his theory was inching its way closer and closer to being proven true with each piece of mounting evidence that the world he was inhabiting was different than the one he was supposed to be in. He shook his head, clearing it and refocusing. He would have to be vigilant.   
  
Harry reached over and clapped a supportive hand on Dale's shoulder and set his own coffee into the cup holder. "Let's go to the hospital, okay?" he said. "We can check on Audrey, see what she remembers if she's up to talking. Then we can head back to the station and get you set up and–"   
  
Dale turned to face Harry, not about to let it go so easily. "This is a serious breach of ethics, Harry. Not just for the Bureau but for me personally.” He kept his eyes on his coffee cup. "Laura came up to my room just now.”    
  
He let the statement hang in the air for a moment, hearing Harry let out a low whistle. Dale's own stomach, once again, twisted itself inside out. Absently, he lifted his coffee cup to his lips and took a sip, and immediately wished he hadn't; the coffee sat in his throat, heavy and thick— _Like the sludge in the Red Room_ , he thought, paralyzed for a brief and terrifying moment of flashback. Whether from the memory of Laura or of his missing time in the Lodge, Dale was consumed by the knowledge that it was equally possible the coffee should come up again as it was for it to go down. He didn't want to puke in Sheriff Truman's vehicle; he searched for an out.   
  
"What did she say?"   
  
Closing his eyes, Dale forced a swallow, feeling his heart slamming in his throat as the coffee, mercifully, went down and the nausea passed. ”Not as much what she _said_ as what she _did_ ," he said. "Now that I know the story, it makes sense. Leaves very little to the imagination what went on between us—" he cut himself off and shook his head, correcting himself. "Between him and her."   
  
Harry leaned back against the headrest and scrubbed a hand over his face. "Boy howdy," was all he said.   
  
Where he would have once marvelled at the rustic country colloquialism, Dale could hardly muster the wherewithal to smile. Because Laura was suddenly not the only issue on his plate today.   
  
His stomach, sitting low and quivering in his pelvis, began to knot. "Harry, how can I face her?"   
  
Harry shook his head, seeming to misunderstand where Dale was coming from. But after a moment, he clued in. “Look: whatever you think, in this world Audrey Horne is a woman you chased after, single-mindedly going into the depths of an unknown hell in order to save her from her fate," he said. "Anything you don't remember doesn't matter right now. What matters in this moment is that she's okay and that she _knows_ she's okay, and that's all because of you."   
  
It was little comfort to Dale, but it had to be enough.   
  
Harry waited out of consideration for several seconds before pulling out of the parking lot and taking the short distance between the diner and the hospital in what felt, to Dale's mind, like record time.   
  
_Time_ , he thought as they parked. It was suddenly a concept that had little meaning to him, no relation to the passage of the day or his movement through it. He stepped out of the truck and stared at the sun, low and middling on the horizon, and wondered how long it would take for it to burn his retinas completely.   



	7. Chapter 7

Audrey’s doctor was stepping out of her room in the same moment that Dale and Harry approached. Harry caught her attention, and the doctor stopped, taking a moment to register the face of the man who was speaking to her, before breaking into the weary smile of a doctor at the end of an overnight shift.   
  
“Sheriff Truman,” she said. “I was wondering when I’d see you here.”   
  
She shook the sheriff’s hand as he gestured with other to Dale. “Doctor Shelvy, you remember FBI Special Agent Dale Cooper?”   
  
“Yes I do," she said, extending her hand. "How are you, Agent Cooper?"   
  
“Recovering,” he said.   
  
Dr. Shelvy nodded with recognition. ”You were there with her last night?”   
  
Dale’s mouth went dry as he nodded. “How is she?” he asked, hoping to distract himself.   
  
Shelvy glanced back at the door. “Given what we know about her experience—which is very little—all we can say is that, physically, she’s in remarkably good shape. She’s been sleeping a lot, which is probably understandable. But she’s coherent when she’s awake and that’s a good sign.”   
  
“Can we speak to her?” Harry asked.   
  
The doctor nodded. “I think that’s all right. I’m releasing her today, just as soon as I finish my rounds. Normally we wouldn’t have kept her overnight but we couldn’t contact her family to take her home.” Dr. Shelvy lowered her voice as she continued. “We don’t need the bed that badly but keeping her unnecessarily for more than twenty-four hours will raise eyebrows. You understand.”   
  
The conversation between sheriff and doctor moved into the realm of the personal, as they bemoaned the disturbing lack of concern from the Horne family and the general state of their respective bureaucratic institutions.    
  
Dale took it in as he moved toward the door to peer in through the small window. Inside, Audrey seemed to be asleep. He hesitated, not wanting to disturb her. But hearing that she’d been alone all night broke his heart. Watching her now, she seemed so small, dwarfed by the hospital bed and covered in blankets, curled fetally on her right side and away from the door.    
  
_ Everyone always seems small in hospital beds _ , he thought.    
  
But with Audrey, suddenly, it was different. He remembered their earliest meeting, over breakfast; he remembered coffees and itchy palms; he remembered her notes, slipped beneath his door with his name on them in her flawless handwriting; he remembered carrying her along dark wooded paths away from One Eyed Jack’s and holding her head in his lap on the drive back, the same way he’d done only hours earlier as they drove her down from the mountain.    
  
She had no one.   
  
_ She has me. _   
  
“We can make sure she gets home," Dale said, glancing back at Harry. “We can do that, right?”    
He knew they could—Audrey was eighteen, after all, and had been given a clean bill of health—but it was deference to Harry’s authority that forced him to check.   
  
Harry nodded but looked to Doctor Shelvy for confirmation himself, which she offered with a nod of her own, and Dale breathed a sigh of relief.   
  
“Can I go in?”   
  
Doctor Shelvy assented. “Nothing too taxing, Agent Cooper,” she reminded him.    
  
Dale turned back to the window and contemplated his next move. His heart began to thud uncontrollably in his chest. He still didn’t know what he’s going to say to her. But whatever it was, he had no choice: he had to go in.   
  
Dale pressed his right hand against the door handle, took a deep breath, and turned the knob.   
  
The room was quiet, save for the whirring electrical hum of the machines and the beep of her heart monitor. But these few sounds were suffocatingly close; there was no echo, which made the whole thing surreal in Dale’s mind, and terrifying. Despite this room's relative brightness and shining sterility, the stark oppression of four walls and no windows overwhelmed him, and as he crossed the floor between the door and her bedside, he felt his vision tunnel. His heart continued to thud, and his palms started sweating.    
  
Dale had had panic attacks before, and recognized the sensation of one oncoming. In the days and weeks following the attack in Pittsburgh and Caroline’s death, his recovery had been punctuated by them, usually in the middle of the night, but always beginning the same way—increased heart rate, sweaty palms, a sense of terrific impending doom. He’d always managed to persevere, and had never sought treatment for them beyond meditation, believing that he could harness the power of his mind himself rather than succumbing to it.    
  
But that had been easy when he was alone.    
  
Dale was no longer an island. He was surrounded by people he cared about, and who evidently cared about him. Never before had it been so necessary for him to stop the panic from consuming him; for  _ their _ sake, not his. The task seemed gargantuan. He concentrated on walking—heel-toe, heel-toe—as he made his way to Audrey. The breaths he drew in were deep and purposeful; he forced himself to be mindful of the way his lungs expanded within his chest, and he let the smells of hospital cleaners be the grounding force that separated where he was from where  _ thought _ he was, which was back in that  _ other  _ room with no windows…     
  
Rounding the end of Audrey's bed, he claimed the chair beside her, feeling the weight of his body as it sank into the avocado-green vinyl cushion. He lifted his hand, flexing it twice before placing it on the bed next to Audrey’s—close enough without touching, concentrating on the feeling of the stiff, starched woven threads against his fingertips—and closed his eyes. Then he counted to ten.   
  
Then twenty.   
  
Then twenty five.    
  
Dale became so afraid to stop, afraid to look—afraid, once again, to discover he never truly left and that he was still there in that awful place—that it was only when he felt the gentle touch of Audrey's hand against his that he dared to let his breathing slow and relax itself into a rhythm he could manage. Her fingers brushed his, encircling them in a soft but determined grip. He squeezed back as best he could and opened his eyes.   
  
“Dale?” she whispered. “Are you okay?”   
  
He let out a nervous laugh. “That’s supposed to be my question.”   
  
Still, her hand remained clasped about his, and he felt as though he’d taken a tranquilizer. Every passing moment that her hand held his, his shirt collar loosened around his neck, and the air he sucked into his lungs felt more like replenishment than penance.   
  
Audrey was facing him, her legs curled up beneath the standard hospital-issued waffle-textured blanket. Her head rested on the thin pillow, and the head-end of the bed was raised slightly forcing her body into a strange position that looked rather uncomfortable. But she didn’t seem to mind; the look in her eyes as she took him in was one of open admiration. It was a look he remembered all too well, even if it lived behind the eyes of a girl who might only  _ look _ like the girl he once knew.   
  
_ First Josie…then Laura _ …he thinks. But this was a shock of a different kind altogether. Audrey wasn’t dead and brought back to life. He’d simply forgotten how beautiful she was.   
  
“How are you?” he asked.   
  
Audrey closed her eyes and took a breath as she nodded. “Okay,” she said. “Did you see my doctor?”   
  
Dale nodded. “She says you can go home today.”   
  
“I know,” Audrey replied. “But not unless I have someone to take me home…no one can reach my father, and—”   
  
Dale saw an opportunity to do good. He reached over to clasp his other hand on top of hers. “We’ve sorted it out,” he said. “We’ll take you home. Don’t worry about that.”   
  
Audrey’s half-smile was more than enough for him but the tears that filled her eyes canceled it out almost immediately.   
  
Concerned, Dale asked, “What’s wrong?”   
  
“Oh Dale…I don’t know how to explain what happened,” she said. She was begging him for answers he didn’t have, and whatever panic he’d felt before was supplanted by an acute sense of grief and anger for failing her.   
  
_ It wasn’t you who failed her, _ he reminded himself…   
  
“I don’t know either,” he admitted. “I don’t…I’m not remembering much myself, is what I mean.” It was a shameful half-truth but it was about all he could muster for now. Still, he pressed his hand against hers, hoping it was a comfort. “But you and me, we’ll figure it out.”   
  
Audrey’s nod was brave, and even though he could tell her lip was trembling he could also see her digging deep, strengthening her resolve.    
  
“I was…at the pageant…”   
  
Dale stroked his thumb across the top of her hand. “Ssh,” he soothed. “You don’t have to do this now.”    
  
“I don’t want to forget, and if I don’t tell someone then I very well might…” she told him as lines worried across her forehead. “You’d warned me that your ex-partner might be there, so I was being cautious. Trying to be. There was a lot going on. The music. The lights…” she shook her head and closed her eyes again. “When I won, I was nervous and excited, but then there was…a fire. Was there a fire, Dale?”   
  
He gripped her hand. “Yes, I believe there was,” he said, remembering the pageant in the  _ other  _ world, wondering how far the two overlapped. “An explosion maybe. Something to distract us from Windom Earle’s true aim, which was to…abduct the winner.”   
  
“Why?” Audrey asked.   
  
Dale shook his head and chose, once again, a lie over the truth. “I think to get to me,” he told her. “He wanted to hurt me.”   
  
“Where is he now?” Audrey asked, her eyes casting about the room, as if it were suddenly possible that he could be in there with them without their knowing it.   
  


Dale sat up straight and realized that this was a question he genuinely didn’t know the answer to. He hadn’t emerged from the Red Room the night before; might Windom emerge later?  _ No,  _ Dale thought.  _ I saw him in there…utterly annihilated… _   
  
“I don’t know, Audrey,” he said absently before returning his attention fully to her and stepping up his efforts to calm her. “But he’s not here, Audrey. And even if he were—”   
  
She shook her head. “I don’t want to think about it,” she said as a shadow of anger crossed her face. “I shouldn’t have been there. I didn’t want to even enter the pageant, but Daddy insisted, and—”   
  
The rising panic in her voice, the pitch and timbre changing as her throat welled up and she inched ever closer to the edge of tears, focused Dale even more. He lifted his hand from hers and brought it to her arm, cupping her shoulder, before brushing back hair from the side of her face.    
  
She kept her eyes closed and continued to recount her remembrance. “I-I was looking for you.”   
  
Gutted, Dale shook his head. “Audrey—”   
  
“I thought I saw you standing by the edge of the stage, and I walked over to you, but…someone grabbed me from behind. Your ex-partner. In the confusion I suppose it was easy to lose track, there were so many people, everyone was screaming and running…” Audrey shivered. “He took me out the back of the Roadhouse. We got in a truck. I tried to get away, Dale, I really did…but he had a gun and I—”   
  
“I know,” he nodded.   
  
She took a deep, shuddering breath that shook her whole body. “We drove forever. He didn’t say a word until we got to the forest. I don’t know where it was, but he pulled off the road and made me get out and walk…then we came to this clearing, and…I was frightened, but I prayed again…I prayed that you’d come, just like you did before. He pulled me into this circle of trees…and…there were red curtains. They just appeared out of nowhere. And he took me by the hand and led me through them, and then…well…the next thing I knew, I was in the backseat of Sheriff Truman’s truck with your arms around me.”   
  
Dale couldn’t help but deflate as she ended her story. He sighed, and then reminded himself that he walked into this room with an aim to comfort, not to interrogate; this was where her memories ended, and he had to be okay with that.   
  
_ Focus _ , he told himself.   
  
“What was in those curtains?” Audrey asked. “Do you remember?”   
  
The memory was so fresh that he didn’t have to close his eyes to conjure the image. “Do I remember?” he asked.  _ How could I forget? _ “Audrey, it was…” he began, trailing off as he realized he didn’t know how to continue. What could he possibly say?  _ I was in this red room and I had no way of escaping and I thought two and a half decades had passed me by but then I woke up in the woods and it’s only tomorrow and it’s not even my world, not really, and… _ _   
_   
“I think it was dark,” she said softly, quietly, so quietly that Dale could hardly hear it over his suddenly hammering heartbeat. “I was alone. Cold…”   
  
“Did you see me?” he asked.   
  
Audrey looked up at him, concern filling her face. “I-I…I don’t…” she stammered, and Dale saw tears squeezing out from between her lashes as she struggled with her words and her memory. “I don’t want to disappoint you. I really don’t. I just don’t remember…”   
  
It was easier to push past his despair the second time, but as he nodded and tried to comfort her again, her eyes opened wide and she sat up, slowly pushing her body until she was upright in the bed.   
  
“Maybe you were there,” she said. “Maybe I did see you…”   
  
This time Dale said nothing.    
  
“But…there were more than just you…more than just one, I mean.”   
  
“More than one?”   
  
“I-I thought…I thought I was delirious…but there were dozens of you. All running around, through the room, through the curtains, one after another after another…”   
  
The implications of what he heard raced through his mind; he could barely concentrate for the noise, the humming electrical buzz that surrounded him and drowned out everything else.   
  
Audrey noticed, her keen sense of empathy overriding any need she had for rest or her own well-being. She leaned over, swinging her legs out from under the covers to reveal bare knees, scraped up and bandaged, covered in bruises. She still had his hand clasped within her own.   
  
“What’s wrong?” she asked.    
  
He blinked, taking her in, bare feet and scraped knees to teary eyes. Still, he said nothing. He couldn’t even remember what her question was.    
  
“Dale, you’re scaring me.”   
  
That time, he heard her. He shook his head. “I-I’m sorry, Audrey,” he stammered. “I didn’t mean—”   
  
But then she lifted his hand to her lips and pressed a kiss to his knuckles—the same way Laura had done—that took away what little wind was left in his sails. Just like at the hotel, he was struck by the ardent familiarity she displayed—the way she hadn’t hesitated as she’d brought his hand to her mouth, or the startling tenderness with which she’d kissed him—and which left him absolutely breathless.    
  
This was not the first time she had kissed him. 

 

Up until that point, with no concrete proof from Sheriff Truman to back up his assumption about the relationship, Dale had clung to the hope that maybe Harry was wrong and he and Audrey had maintained a cordial, professional friendship and nothing more. But now, he knew...   
  
The buzzing had returned, settling in his chest behind his breastbone and vibrating at just the right frequency to make him queasy. For the second time that morning, he felt like he needed to throw up. Forcing the urge back down, Dale swam through his mind to find the words he needed to say for her sake.   
  
She beat him to it. “Do you feel that?” she asked, dropping his hand as she opened and closed her own.   
  
“Feel what?”   
  
She stared at her palm. “They’re itchy again,” she said.   
  
“Your palms are itchy?”    
  
“Mm-hmm,” she nodded, knitting her brows together as she continued to open and close her hand, squeezing it into a fist and then stretching it wide. “It’s such an odd feeling. Like it’s fallen asleep or something. I wish I knew what it was…”   
  
The buzz had lessened, but Dale still felt frustratingly ‘off’; he didn’t know what his next move should be. All he could think about was how badly he needed to figure everything out…   
  
“Audrey,” he started, borrowing a phrase from Harry. “Let’s put a pin in this—in all of this—for now. Why don’t you get dressed and ready to go…”   
  
“My dress,” she said. “The police kept it as evidence.”   
  
Dale nodded. “Okay,” he said, standing up from the chair. His hand grazed her knee, and Audrey let out a gasp—he had brushed against a large bandage, spotted with old, dark blood. His stomach pitted and he flinched, squeezing his hand shut. “Sorry.”   
  
“It’s okay.”    
  
He swallowed. “I’ll find something for you to wear and bring it right back. You rest for now. Dr. Shelvy will be ready to discharge you any minute.”   
  
She smiled and laboured to get back into bed; Dale helped, reaching his hand behind her knees to lift them up, carefully, onto the hospital sheets. He felt the warmth from her body still lingering in the blanket as he brought it up and over her once again, and even though he could barely stand the quiver in the very air around her, a part of him softened as they locked eyes.   
  
“Dale?”   
  
“Hm?”   
  
Audrey paused, blinking slowly. “Thank you.”   
  
He smoothed the blanket down her arm. “For what?”   
  
She shrugged. “It sounds like you saved my life. Again.” She closes her eyes. “I-I…didn’t think you cared…that you cared enough about me…not after—”   
  
Dale looked down at her in shock. He wanted to refute her, to tell her she was crazy for thinking such things, but she looked so tired, so small as she nodded and closed her eyes, seeming to fall asleep as soon as her head hit the pillow. He simply shook his head and offered a “Sssh” that he hoped was enough to placate her.   
  
Seeing her sleep and being hit with the realization that the front he’d put up could be taken down, Dale felt a rush of relief that was almost instantly supplanted by faintness. Whether he was lightheaded from the events of the night before or from the psychological ramifications of the morning—all of it, from Josie and Laura turning up alive, to the news of his assignations with both Laura and Audrey—he felt his world grow top-heavy. He felt like he was climbing a set of stairs in the dark and had miscounted the number of steps, arriving at the landing before he was ready for it; his stomach cratered with each step he took between Audrey’s bed and the door to her room. Around the edges of his field of vision, everything blurred and darkened. He shot his hand out for support, feeling like he might fall, and grabbed hold of Sheriff Truman instead.    
  
“Coop?”   
  
Dale gripped the sheriff’s arms as he stumbled and nearly collapsed into the hallway.   
  
“Whoa, whoa,” Harry said. “What’s going on?”   
  
But he didn’t—couldn’t—stop for questions. He pulled himself out of the sheriff’s grasp and dashed down the hall to the elevator lobby, his hand on the wall the entire way. There, he found a public bathroom, and staggered inside, only to collapse against the sink gasping for breath as he struggled to loosen his tie from around his neck.   
  
His knees weakened; he held himself up against the porcelain but his elbows felt ready to give out at any second, so he hunched over, resting on his forearms, lifting one hand to cradle his head. He didn’t notice the sound of the door opening behind him, or of Harry stepping across the tiles to his side.   


There was endless silence, Dale knew, but he couldn’t hear it over the roar in his head. When Harry grabbed a paper towel from the dispenser and dampened it at the next sink over, Dale could barely hear the sound of the water running, so loud was the din in his ears.   
  
“You okay?”   
  
Dale shook his head. “Harry, what the hell happened to me?”    
  
His own voice resonated within his chest and seemed to shatter all around him, echoing off the tiles next to the  _ drip-drip-drip _ of the faucet and his own ragged breaths. The next thing Dale heard, several seconds later, was the Sheriff’s heavy sigh.   
  
“I’m gonna take you back home,” he said. “Josie’ll put together a nice lunch. You can rest and—”   
  
“No,” Dale said. “We need to find Audrey some clothes and take her home first.”   
  
“Clothes?”   
  
Dale paused. “Her dress—”   
  
Harry nodded. “Okay, I’ll…take care of it.”   
  
Dale used the respite to lift his head and glance in the mirror. It startled him to see his young eyes looking back at him; deeply uncomfortable, he couldn’t hold his own gaze for long, and instead he lowered his head and looked at his hands, remembering the age spots and wrinkles he used to see there when he was in the Red Room. He’d always imagined that his face would look the same when he next saw it. The fact that that wasn’t how it played out weighed heavily on him. He wanted answers, and he didn’t even know what questions he ought to be asking.    
  
Or who to ask in the first place.   
  
With a slow shake of his head, he brought the dampened paper towel to his face once more. “I need to figure this out.”   
  
“You will,” Harry replied, resting a hand on his shoulder. “Give yourself time. You can’t ignore the fact that you’ve been through something big. Bigger than big.”   
  
“People have been hurt. They’re going to continue being hurt—”   
  
“What about you?”   
  
Dale stood up to his full height, despite being weak in the knees. He rested the heel his hand on the edge of the sink for support. “What about me?” he asked, unable to help the sharp edge of confrontation from slipping into his voice.   
  
Harry squared his shoulders, hardening his features. “You need to take a breather,” he said. “Relax. Get some rest.”   
  
Dale knew it wasn’t a suggestion but an order, and for a brief moment he wanted to remind Harry that small town sheriffs didn’t have the authority to tell an agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigations to ‘take a breather’. But he closed his eyes instead and sighed. “I don’t have the luxury of being able to take a break, Harry,” Dale replied. “And I don’t think I deserve it either.”   
  
When Harry threw his hands in the air, it surprised Dale for two reasons: first, because the sheriff’s exasperation with him had never been so clearly on display before, and second because Dale wondered why it had taken so long for him to display it.   
  
“Look, Coop, I’m not interested in helping you throw whatever little pity party you’ve got goin’ on here,” he said. “If you want to indulge in this exercise in…self-flagellation, be my guest.  But you’re on your own. I’m not gonna be part of it.” 

  
Chastised, Dale nodded. “I didn’t mean anything by it,” he said. “I’m just…trying to fix what I…what  _ he _ did.”   
  
“But that’s just it!” Harry said. “What he did, to everyone in town, is what  _ you _ did. There is no him and you. There’s just you. Nobody else knows any different.”   
  
The thought gutted him. “But I know,” he said, his voice strangled as it left his throat.   
  
Harry continued. “How many times do I have to say it, Cooper? What you did isn’t all that bad,” he said. “It’s not like you held up the Savings and Loan or something.” He took a half step forward. “You helped us solve the murders of Ronette Pulaski and Teresa Banks…you brought down the Renault drug empire…and you saved Audrey Horne’s life, twice. Everything else is…” Harry trailed off as he waved his hand, like he was brushing away a cloud of cigarette smoke in front of his face, but said nothing.   
  
None of what he said comforted Dale in the slightest. But he saw what the sheriff was getting at, and offered a smile of thanks nonetheless.   
  
Harry sighed. “Look—I’ll call someone to come and pick you up. They’ll take you to the station, back to the hotel, to my place…it doesn’t matter. You do whatever it is you need to do, okay?”   
  
“But Audrey—”   
  
“I’ll take care of it.”   
  
Dale nodded and once again checked himself out in the mirror, taking a moment to fix his tie with his breathing having returned to normal. “Okay, Harry,” he said. “If you can take Audrey home, make sure she’s settled…well, if it’s all the same to you I think I’ll just walk back to the station, get myself set up, see what kind of headway I can make on this.” He cleared his throat. “It’s not a long walk from here?”   
  
“No, it’s not.” Harry said, cautiously relieved. “And maybe that’s a good idea. I’ll let ‘em know to expect you. Lucy’ll point you to a workspace you can use.”   
  
“Right.”   
  
“Okay.”   
  
Dale looked down at his hand, at the balled up paper towel. Both hands were shaking. He closed his eyes. “A walk should do me some good.”   
  
Harry echoed the sentiment in his own way, and with a smile. “The restorative power of the great outdoors.”   
  
Dale remembered the trees from the night before and stifled a shudder. He didn’t want to admit it, but there was a very real chance that the great outdoors would not be restorative in his mind for a very long while.


	8. Chapter 8

When Dale arrived on the steps of the Twin Peaks Sheriff’s Department, the shakes had long since disappeared but the tremors in his stomach remained in full force. In spite of a stop at the hospital gift shop on his way out the door for a pack of gum and some anti-nausea pills, he still felt queasy; whether from nerves, hunger, disgust, fear, or all of them at once, it was impossible to ignore.   
  
He hoped Lucy had coffee on and that she'd saved him a jelly donut. But of course he knew she would, and the thought made him smile as he pulled the door open and stepped into the vestibule.   
  
Lucy greeted him with trademark excitement, and for the first time in a while, Cooper felt truly at home. She ran out from behind the reception office and into the lobby to meet him, and when she embraced him, it was with alarming affection. She squeezed her arms around his shoulders.   
  
“Agent Cooper!” she exclaimed. “It’s so wonderful to have you back! We were so worried!”   
  
Dale found himself clinging to her as much as she was to him, so grateful was he for the physical connection. She smelled of lemon and the faintly sweet scent of the ditto machine in the basement workroom. He inhaled deeply, and tried to move past the eerie sensation—once again—that he was embracing a friend he hadn’t seen in a quarter century but who hadn't aged a day.   
  
_ Correction: she has aged exactly one day...  _   
  
The seasick feeling returned and he swallowed past it as he pulled out of the hug and held Lucy at arms’ length. “You’re a sight for sore eyes, Lucy,” he croaked.   
  
“Can I get you a cup of coffee?” she asked. “There’s a fresh box of donuts too. I stole the jelly ones out of another box and put them in this box because Sheriff Truman told me you were coming and I know how much you like them, and no one else will mind, I’m sure, since they really don’t seem to care what kind of donut they’re eating and—”   
  
Dale stifled a chuckle and leaned forward to kiss Lucy on the forehead. “Coffee and a donut would be absolutely perfect.”   
  
Lucy’s blush extended well past the collar of her knit sweater as she smiled and stepped back toward the kitchen. “We’ve got an office for you now. If you want to follow me…”   
  
She walked off through the lobby and to the right, past Harry’s office and the conference room and down the adjacent hallway for a short distance before stopping outside a locked door. “It’s not much,” she said, fumbling for a moment with the office keys before unlocking it and pushing the door open wide for him to see.    
  
It was a small space, but well-apportioned. There was a desk and a phone, with a lamp beside that, and a plain but serviceable desk chair behind it. Three mismatched four-drawer filing cabinets lined the wall behind the desk; on top of one of them was the mounted head of a Bighorn sheep, resting on its side; above it were the holes in the wall where it had once hung. There was a window on his left; Dale could see the edge of the parking lot and the street out front.    
  
“Like I said,” Lucy offered. “It’s not much, but—”   
  
“It’s perfect,” Dale said, taking off his coat and folding it over his arm. “In Philadelphia, I have to share an office with four other people. This...is luxurious.”   
  
Lucy smiled and bounced a little on her toes. “Can I get you anything?” she asked. “Aside from the coffee?”   
  
Dale nodded. “I wonder if I can get all the case files on the deaths of Teresa Banks…” he paused, nearly saying Laura’s name before mentally correcting himself. “…and Ronette, as well as the attack on Laura Palmer?”   
  
Lucy nodded. “I’ll bring them right up.”   
  
“Thank you, Lucy,” Dale said, and Lucy turned around to leave. She was about to shut the door behind her when Dale remembered something. He spun to face her. “Oh, one other thing…”   
  
"Hm?”   
  
“Who would I have to talk to about getting back issues of the town newspaper? I only need about the last four or five… .”   
  
“Oh, well, you can phone around to the Post’s office. I'm sure it won't be a problem. They have an archive going back decades.” She smiled. “I’ll be right back with everything, okay Agent Cooper?”   
  
“Okay Lucy,” he said, and she stepped out and closed the door behind her.   
  
Alone again, Cooper distracted himself by taking a closer look around the room. It was clean, although he could tell it hadn't been used regularly in some time—Lucy’s struggle to find the right key for the door and the scent of lemon cleanser, the same he'd caught on Lucy, told that story very well. It was smaller than the other offices he’d seen in the station—probably belonging to a deputy at one point—but for his needs it was perfect. He walked around the desk and examined the pictures hung on the wall—one of some log drivers with their haul next to a Packard Saw Mill company wagon, and one of the construction of the Great Northern, both in black and white and both appearing to date to the early first half of the century.    
  
The slight tremble in his stomach reminded him that he both hadn’t eaten and was still very much on edge. He sat down at the desk, labouring to occupy his mind, and pulled open each drawer out of curiosity; an exercise in mindfulness, he listened to the sound of the drawer, the items clanking around inside, felt the cold steel pull in his hand and the weight of the drawer as it moved. He found each drawer to be entirely stocked, with pads of paper and boxes of pens and miscellaneous office supplies, which led him to believe this had been a storage room before it was his makeshift office.    
  
The thought of Lucy spending time cleaning out a junk room as quickly as she did, just for him, made him smile again; he pulled out a clean pad of paper and three pens from the box on top, a different brand than the ones beneath.  _ Black ink _ , he thought.  _ She even remembered my favourite type of pen... _ __   
  
It was, once again, a comfort to him to think that even though he was in a different world, there were some things that remained constant. His overwhelming gratitude toward Lucy made him think he really ought to buy her some flowers or something. She was the Diane of the Twin Peaks Sheriff's Department and—   
  
_ Diane! _ __   
  
Dale felt around in his pockets and realized that he didn't have his tape recorder with him. 

  
_ It has to be at the Great Northern _ , he thought.  _ Think...did you see it anywhere? _ He walked through room 315, mentally cataloging the items in his possession, but drew several complete and frustrating blanks.    
  
_ Of course, you were kind of preoccupied when you were there this morning... _ __   
  
He's didn't want to panic—again—but it occurred to him that maybe in this world he had no Diane. Maybe there was no one out there to send his tapes to, no one to listen to him, no one to fix things on the other end of the line. And his heart sank a little in spite of his best efforts to keep it buoyed.   
  
He didn't have to wait long to be interrupted; Lucy’s soft knock at the door preceded her entrance, and she arrived carrying a polystyrene plate of powdered jelly donuts and a mug of coffee. The donuts sat balanced on a stack of file folders which she set down in front of him and which he recognized as case files, all of them carrying Harry’s handwriting on the tabs.   
  
“I also called down to the Post for you,” she said as she put the mug down in front of him. “Someone will be coming by with back issues going back to the beginning of February sometime after lunch hour, I think. I’m not sure exactly since they didn’t say a time, but if I know the fellas down there they’re probably all heading over to the Double R right now for plate specials, because it’s really the only break they get, and they’re always at the diner, and if news breaks while they’re gone, that’s the place they’re going to hear it first anyway, so—”   
  
Cooper reached out and placed his hand on top of Lucy’s. “I missed you, Lucy Moran,” he told her, suddenly wistful, and with a lump of a different kind seized in his throat. “I think you’re a remarkable woman, and I am very glad that you’re on our team.”   
  
Lucy seemed genuinely taken aback, and once again blushed from just below her fringe to the base of her throat. “Well whose team would I be on otherwise?” she asked.   
  
Dale grinned all the same. “Thank you,” he said, with a nod to the plate of donuts.   
  
She nodded. “If you need anything, anything at all, just dial ‘0’ on the phone and you’ll reach my desk.”   
  
And with that, Lucy stepped back and out of the room, leaving Dale with donuts and coffee and the silence of the tiny office.   
  
"Well," he said to himself as he leaned against the desk and uncapped one of the pens. The clock above the door showed that it was just before noon. He sighed and drew a line down the length of the page in front of him, bisecting it vertically.  __ Gotta start somewhere , he thought, as he began to jot down everything—so far—that had been wrong about this place…


	9. Chapter 9

Dale didn't hear the knock at the door at first, only noticing that someone was there when the door creaked open to reveal Sheriff Truman standing just outside. He carried in his hands two mugs of steaming coffee. 

Dale had never been more desperate for something in his life.

The exhausted FBI Agent pushed himself away from the station’s portable microfiche reader and glanced up at the clock. He’d been at it for five hours straight now. Giving a long yawn, he rubbed side of his nose with his finger. “Hiya Harry,” he croaked.

Harry handed him one of the mugs, which Dale took a liberal swig from almost instantly. 

"Thought I'd check in on you, see how you were doing," Harry said, glancing around the room, in which Dale had fully made himself at home. Next to the microfiche reader and the spools of film on the desk, newspapers lay strewn about in a chaotic jumble; some, not needed any longer, sat piled on the floor. 

Truman seemed amused. “Lucy said you’d called down for more newspapers from the Post but…” he let out a low whistle. “It looks like the entire archive exploded.”

“I’ve got issues going back to the Depression,” he said. “Quite the lively town.”

Harry took a gulp from his own coffee mug. “You’ve really taken to this, haven't you?"

Dale shrugged. "I feel like my very existence depends on it," he replied, lowering his voice. "Here  _ and _ there."

Harry glanced behind him and into the hallway before squeezing in and shutting the door. "What've you got so far?"

“Not much,” Dale admitted, picking up the three sheets of paper he'd filled with notes about what he remembered versus what was different, and handed them to Harry. "It's not exhaustive. I'm limited by what information they choose to print in the Post and the timeframe during which I was in Twin Peaks but I’m confident that at least my remembrances are correct.” He shrugged as he looked around him. “The rest of this is a rabbit hole I ended up chasing down. So many things are different, going back years…”

Harry read what he’d been given, turning the pages over in his hand as he absorbed it all. He shook his head. “All of this is…”

“Hard to believe?”

The sheriff nodded. “It’s been a tough forty-eight hours, I’ll tell ya that,” he said. “There are just so many questions…”

“I know,” Dale said as he took the sheets back, stacking them in a pile on a clear corner of the desk. “I feel more lost now than I did before I started.” He paused, leaning his hands against the desk. “I don’t know what I don’t know.”

A depth of silence stretched on between the two men as the gulf between them seemed to widen with the knowledge that they were at such a tremendous loss to explain the circumstances of their situation.

Finally, Sheriff Truman sighed. “"Well...I'm curious about the Black Lodge connections to all of this," Harry replied. "It seems that your investigations in this other world were far further along than ours were."

"Apparently," Dale said. "You didn't know that Windom Earle was involved in Project Blue Book?”

“Blue Book? You mean the alien stuff? Government conspiracies and all that?” Harry shook his head. “All you told us about him was that you’d had an affair with his wife, and you suspected he orchestrated the attack that killed her and wounded you in Pittsburgh,” he said, adding: “And that the stairs didn’t quite reach the attic, or so you said.” 

_ So far, so good. _ “So we didn’t know that he was looking for an entrance to the Black Lodge here?"

"I didn't even know that the Black Lodge was a place that actually  _ existed _ , outside of the local legends, that is," Harry replied. “What could he have wanted with the Black Lodge?”

“It’s a place of considerable power,” Dale said. “Agent Earle was looking for a way to harness that power in order to become…a living god, I suppose. A Dugpa. And I believe once he did, he was going to use his power to exact terrific revenge against the people who have wronged him. Myself included.”

Harry remained quiet as he processed the information. “So it’s real then?” he asked finally. “The Black Lodge is a real place?”

Dale nodded slowly, gravely. ”I believe that’s where I've been for the last...well, however long."

Harry looked pensive, thoughtful, but worried. “We always suspected that something strange was going on,” he said, casting his eyes up at Dale. “There’s a secret organization—”

“The Bookhouse Boys,” Dale nodded.

Harry seemed stunned. “You know then?”

Dale held up a hand, a half-way salute, hoping it was solemn enough. “Honorary member,” he said.

“Your counterpart was as well,” Harry said. “When we went up to rescue Audrey.”

At the sound of her name, Dale flicked his eyes up to Harry. “How is Audrey, by the way?”

“At home,” he said. “Resting.”

“And her parents?”

Harry shrugged. “They seemed...disinterested. Poor kid hasn’t had it easy. The Hornes have always put more stock in everyone else over their own kids. As long as I’ve known them, anyway, and that’s most of my life.”

_ Another thing that hasn’t changed, _ Dale thought to himself as he looked down at his notes, trying to force from his mind the idea that across universes, Audrey Horne was always alone. He pushed his brows together above his nose. “You said Major Briggs went missing a couple weeks ago…mid-March sometime, right?”

“Yeah, that’s about right.”

_ Same as in my world _ , Dale thought. “But he’s not seen any visitors since then?”

Harry shook his head. “No one except Betty and Bobby, I imagine.”

Dale measured the benefits and drawbacks of a meeting with Major Briggs. This was an ally he needed. “I’d like to try to see him,” he said. 

“Yeah?”

Dale nodded. “I think he’ll prove invaluable to our investigation.”

Harry weighed his options before nodding. “I’ll call Betty. See what we can set up.”

Dale nodded. “Appreciate it.”

“What do you think he’ll have to say?”

“I don’t know,” Dale said. “But where I’m from, Major Briggs was instrumental in figuring out the ins and outs of the Black Lodge.”

At this, Harry leaned forward, his intrigue written all over his face. “How so?”

“He gave us information about Project Blue Book, which he’d been working on for several years by the time I chanced to meet him.”

“Project Blue Book…” Harry said again, his voice low. “But I thought that all ended years ago.”

“Officially,” Dale said. “Briggs was working…covertly. And, years ago, long before I became an agent, Windom Earle was involved with it as well.”

“Holy smoke,” Harry said, his voice a hoarse hair above a whisper as he scrubbed a hand over the back of his neck. Several seconds elapsed before he continued. “We—the Bookhouse Boys, I mean—we always thought something strange was going on up in Ghostwood but I guess we just assumed it was  _ boogeymen _ , not  _ little green _ men.”

_ Who’s to say it wasn’t the boogeyman? _ Dale thought. “The nature of his work was always very obscure.  _ Classified _ , he used to say. I imagine it’s the same for him here.” Dale continued to frown. “But I won’t know until I ask him.”

Harry sat up straight. “But you  _ know _ all of this now,” Harry said. “If that much is the same between both worlds, and if Major Briggs isn’t going to confirm or deny anything you tell him, maybe it’s not even worth our time. You already know what’s going on.”

But Dale wasn’t going to be convinced so easily. “Harry, I just have a feeling that he’s supposed to be involved,” he said. “I need to know what he knows. And he needs to know what I know.”

Harry deflated slightly as he sank into the chair, resigned to the course of action. “So Windom Earle and Garland Briggs both worked on Project Blue Book. Windom was searching for the Black Lodge so he could…hocus-pocus himself to god-like status and ruin your life. Major Briggs helped you figure it all out.”

“In my world, yes,” Dale said. 

Another long pause stretched on. “What happened to Earle in the Lodge then?”

Dale remembered the moment when BOB, enraged at Windom’s attempt at taking Dale’s soul in exchange for Annie’s life, had seemingly destroyed Windom in a flash of fire, reducing him to an empty, soulless husk. He shivered. “He never made it out,” Dale said.

“There’s been no sign of him up at Glastonbury Grove either,” Harry said. “I suppose it’s safe to say he’s still trapped?”

Dale nodded. “That would be my guess.”

The forced air heating system shut off and the deep quiet became even more oppressive as it settled against the creaks and groans of the old sheriff’s station.

Harry cleared his throat, and as soft as it was, the sound was positively deafening. “How did she die?”

Dale looked up at him, not entirely sure what questions he was asking. “Hm?” he asked. “How did who die?”

“Laura.”

An involuntary shiver rippled from the base of Dale’s neck all the way down his spine and back up again before he answered. “Blood loss,” he said. “Blunt force trauma to the head, and several smaller injuries, which all added up to…” he trailed off.

“Same as Ronette.”

Dale nodded. “Same killer, too.”

Harry shook his head in disbelief. “ _ Your _ Leland Palmer murdered his own daughter?”

Dale had almost forgotten that part of the horrible story, and the fact that no one in this world was likely aware of it. He swallowed thickly. “He’d been abusing her for years. Molestation. Rape. Victimized from early adolescence, all culminating in the attack that ended her life.”

Harry made a fist with his hand against the armrest of the chair. “Low-life bastard…”

Dale had never seen Harry react in such a manner. It was unnerving, even if it was warranted. “You say he’s in custody? Leland?”

“That’s right,” Harry replied. “County jail. Awaiting trial.”

Suddenly curious, Dale narrowed his eyes. “Has he attempted to take his own life?” he asked. “Made any threats that he might do so?”

Harry shrugged. “Not that I know of."

“Any odd behaviours?”

“You mean aside from murdering his daughter’s classmate in a rage?” Harry answered. “Why are you asking this?”

“Well, it would be odd if the same perpetrator committed the same crime in both timelines but the similarities ended there, wouldn’t it>”

“What other similarities could there be?” Harry asked.

But Dale wasn’t listening any longer. None of this tracked. When BOB had been in possession of Leland, he’d disposed of the vessel as soon as Leland was apprehended. For this world’s Leland to be in custody for a period of weeks, with no instability or threats of any kind...

“Maybe BOB is dormant…” Dale asked.  _ Or maybe… _

“The same Bob you said was responsible last night?” Harry said. “The one from the Lodge?”

Dale sighed, realizing that this was yet another piece of the puzzle that the Sheriff didn’t have. 

“Yes. BOB is an…entity. Incapable of taking material form in this world, he’s been forced to take a human host, inhabiting or otherwise influencing them to commit vile acts…”

Harry stared at Dale, absolutely dumbstruck.

Undeterred, Dale continued. “In my world, BOB came to Leland when he was a young boy, and stayed with him until the end, until he forced Leland to kill himself,” Dale said. “The question of culpability would have been a tricky one. BOB essentially forced Leland’s hand, the entire time. It’s hard to know where BOB ended and Leland began.”

“And you think—?” 

Dale had no idea what to think. “That it’s possible  _ this _ Leland is also possessed?” He shook his head and groaned. “There’s so much more I need to know, that I can’t know from this.” He gestured around him at the newspapers. “I should call Albert. I should call Gordon. I need to find my tape recorder…”

“Oh!” Harry said, reaching into his pocket and retrieving the micro cassette recorder Dale remembered. “It fell out of your pocket Saturday night, in Glastonbury Grove. I forgot to give it back to you…”

He handed the object to Dale, who held it in his hand as if it were the Shroud of Turin. “So Diane is…”

The words hung there in the air as he trailed off, and Harry stared at Dale in awkward silence for several seconds before filling in the blank. “Your assistant?” he offered.

Dale sighed.  _ She exists _ , he thought. With trembling hands, he pocketed the tape recorder and felt instantly at ease. An idea began to percolate in the back of his mind.

“Look,” Harry said, standing up. “Let’s grab a bite and plan our moves for tomorrow. You can call Philadelphia on the way out.”

Dale shook his head and patted his pocket. “Harry, I appreciate the offer, but I’m suddenly wondering if my tapes might give me the rest of the insight I haven’t gotten here…”

“You sure?”

The FBI Agent nodded. “Thanks Harry,” he said. “I mean it.”

Placated, Harry gave a sharp nod. “You’re welcome,” he said, reaching into his other pocket, suddenly remembering something. When he pulled his hand out again, he was holding a set of keys. “Your car is out front.”

Dale took the keys and looked at them.  _ Do I even remember how to drive?  _ he wondered.

“Just like riding a bicycle,” Harry said, as if reading his mind. He clapped a hand on Dale’s shoulder and then backed toward the door. “If you need anything—anything at all—you know how to reach me, right?”

“Right.”

“Okay,” Harry said. “See you tomorrow, Coop.”

“Yeah, see you,” Dale said with an absent smile as the sheriff took his leave, and the rest of the evening extended itself in front of him like the highway that snaked its way up the mountain toward the Great Northern Hotel.


	10. Chapter 10

Dale sat in the middle of his hotel bed, surrounded by papers, microcassette tapes, and what was left of his room service meal; his tape recorder rested against his thigh as he stretched his legs out atop the patterned comforter. Ensconced in his work, he was a man filled with contentment as well as beset by anxiety.

It was reassuring to have his the recorder back, to be sure, but it was an absolute miracle to discover that the Diane in  _ this _ world was more or less the same as  _ his _ Diane, that his tapes had made their way back to him when she was through transcribing them back in Philadelphia just as they did where he came from.

Not only that, but they had been stashed in the room safe—exactly where he had kept his in the other room—bundled together with a copy of the transcripts. Initially, these facts buoyed Dale’s flagging spirits. It was jarring to imagine the myriad differences between his world and this one; recognizing bits of himself and the things he knew to be true was calming.

But as the night had worn on and he surveyed the materials in front of him, reality once again came crashing down. This world was just familiar enough to recognize, but not enough to inspire true comfort. Dale’s hackles continued to be raised as he read and listened to his own words—his  _ own voice _ —describing events that never happened and people with personalities shifted two inches to the left of where they ought to be.

He wanted to make a tape for Diane recounting this whole thing, the confusing mess in which he found himself. But she was, for all intents and purposes and in spite of the little things, a stranger to him.

Dale suddenly felt so alone.

Still, he clicked on the tape recorder and began to narrate, knowing full well it was a tape no one would ever hear.

“Diane,” Dale said as he depressed the button on his tape recorder and smiled at the familiar whirring of the tiny motor inside. “It’s just past eleven pm on Monday night. March twenty-ninth…” he paused, letting the thought trail off for a moment before adding, with slow deliberation: “Nineteen-eighty-nine..." 

He let the words trail off, inhaling sharply once they had before continuing. 

"So much has happened and yet it’s like nothing has happened. I don’t even know where to start.” He looked at the stack of papers beside him. “I lost my tape recorder the night I went into Glastonbury Grove. This is my first recording since Sheriff Truman returned it to me just this afternoon. Diane—I’m addressing this to you without any real hope that you’ll hear it. Seems better than merely talking to myself—what happened to me in the woods that night is something I do not yet have the words to properly describe. It would seem that I disappeared into a terrible place…and that time ceased its relentless linear march forward and became as subjective as my description of the colour of the sky versus yours.” 

Dale sighed, lowering the recorder from his mouth for a second before continuing. “I am assured that I was only gone for around a day. But from my perspective,  _ twenty-five years  _ passed in this Red Room. I aged, physically as well as mentally. I was  _ aware  _ of the passage of this time, although I have no way of knowing how I came to understand that twenty-five years specifically had in fact passed. It's just something I know to be true." He took another breath. "There was no escape from this place, although I tried. It was a singularly frightening experience, and one which…frankly…I’m surprised I’m able to talk about in any kind of coherent manner. Mere weeks in solitary confinement has been known to cause prisoners in this country’s penal system to temporarily lose control of their faculties. The mind cannot handle this kind of isolation for extended periods…”

_ If I really did experience twenty-five years in what was, essentially, a prison...how am I still sane enough to talk about it? _

Dale shook his head. “The fact that I’m able to question my sanity at all leads me to believe that I am not insane. Unless this is a mere  _ simulation _ of reality, in which case…but no, that’s a line of thinking I refuse to follow.” 

He sat up straighter and crossed his arms in front of him. “What is more puzzling and troubling to me is that the world I have walked into appears to be altered from the one I left behind. How this is possible, I can only speculate. For the present, I feel it’s necessary to enumerate the ways in which  _ this  _ world differs from  _ my  _ world.”

At this point, Dale lifted the transcripts into his lap. “I am limited only to the transcripts from this case, which date to February twenty-fourth of this year, or a little over a month ago. But even within these pages, things do not add up…”

He talked about the changes in the case—how he remembered the investigation playing out compared to how the case played out here, with Leland in jail and Ronette dead—and its main players. He spoke of the side cases he’d been involved with—about Josie and the DEA investigation, and the changes there. He spoke about Windom Earle and the apparent mystery that his presence and motives presented to the investigators on this side, without the benefit of information regarding Earle's involvement with Project Blue Book. He spoke about Major Briggs, and the role that he hoped the military man would play now that Sheriff Truman was aware of the Major’s involvement in the other world. By the time he had finished, twenty minutes had elapsed on the fresh tape he’d put into the recorder.

Another pause, another deep breath. “It is jarring in and of itself to listen to words spoken in your voice which you do not remember speaking—which, in fact, you know you  _ didn’t _ speak. But more than that, it is the _content_ of my tapes that give me pause, and that is all I have to go on. Needless to say...this has been a very confusing and frightening night…” he said, trailing off, his voice weary and tired. “Some things are very hard to wrap my mind around. Laura is very much  _ alive,  _ Diane. She was  _ here  _ in this  _ room  _ earlier today…and Annie doesn’t seem to exist at all except as a memory. Meanwhile, Audrey Horne…”

At the mention of her name, Dale felt his heart surge into his throat. He attempted to clear it again before continuing. “Diane, these differences would be enough on their own to warrant alarm, but I’m afraid that’s not the whole story. Listening to my tapes and reading these transcripts, I find myself describing the people of Twin Peaks in vastly different ways that I remember them. Their personalities, Diane, are not the same. They are, essentially, different people. I’ve described Harry as anxious and talkative when I know of no lawman as laconic and steadfast as he is. Josie Packard I describe as funny and outgoing, incapable of hurting a fly, and their relationship is an open fact, not a hidden secret.” He paused and took a breath, adding: “Not the mention that, in  _ my _ world, she’s been dead for a week…”

Dale flipped through the notes again, looking for more evidence to document. “I have found several instances like this, where my descriptions of people I have met differ from my remembrance of them before I went into the Red Room. But none of the differences are as striking as the one that exists where my life intersects with Laura Palmer’s and Audrey Horne’s…which is to say that my relationship with each of them…”

He paused the tape recorder, not sure what he should say, if anything. He scanned the bed, his eyes landing on the pages in his lap. They were open to the same place which he’d been over already so often he could have recited his own words back to himself verbatim. His fingertips scanned the words Diane had transcribed and sent back to him, and he felt the pinch of embarrassment in his stomach thinking about his secretary listening to him describe these things, typing them out, reading them back to herself to make sure she got it all down:

_ “Diane…6:15 am, Sunday, March 12. I’ve just been with Laura Palmer…she knows her father is Ronette’s killer and the man responsible for the attack on her person. She was inconsolable when this fact was revealed to us, and I sought to comfort her. I don’t know if I succeeded, but she is sleeping soundly in my bed and I can only hope that our actions together over the course of the last several hours precipitated this…” _

_ “Saturday, March 18th… have found myself preternaturally preoccupied with sex. My suspension has been lifted, so I suppose I could attribute this to my reversal of fortune. That, or perhaps my brush with death yesterday at Dead Dog Farm has infused me with new life in some way. Either way, it is worth noting that I have—rather remarkably, I should add, considering issues such as the male refractory period—spent last night with Laura and, just now—it is just past sunset, Diane—been the recipient of an advance from the lovely Audrey as well…” _

_ “March 21. The first day of Spring. What is, to many, a time of renewal and rebirth has been, for me, a day of upset. Suckerpunched by the sheriff, Diane. I suspect he knows about Laura and me. Or Audrey and me. Or, come to think of it, both…” _

Dale’s stomach turned as he put the pages back together and clicked off the recorder, sighing and scrubbing his hand over his face. He was exhausted, but he couldn’t stop to rest.  _ Not with all this hanging over me _ , he thought, once more casting his eyes about the bed.

The sound of a knock at the door startled him out of his reverie. He paused for a moment as his level of alertness rose and he tried to judge who would want to see him at such an hour. Quietly, he swung his legs off the bed and set his recorder on the nightstand; careful to not step too loudly and squeak the boards, he approached the door, ears trained on the other side, debating whether or not to get his service weapon.   
  
“Who is it?” he asked finally.   
  
A pause. Then, quietly: “It’s me.”   
  
She didn’t have to say her name for him to know who it was. He pulled the door open, and he saw Audrey backlit by the corridor lights and framed by the door jamb.   
  
He scanned the hallway, left then right, before addressing her. “Audrey. Is everything alright?”   
  
She nodded. “I just…I don’t mean to bother you—”   
  
“It’s no bother,” he interrupted. “I’m happy to see you up and about…”   
  
She looked him up and down, taking in his casually unbuttoned dress shirt and shoeless feet. “You  _ were _ busy, weren’t you?”   
  
Dale looked down at his inelegant state of dress and blinked, reaching his hand back to rub his neck. “Just…going over notes,” he replied, feeling himself blush.   
  
Audrey’s weak smile only served to underscore the sadness in her eyes. She pressed a hand to her forehead. “When Sheriff Truman brought me home he said you’d taken ill and that’s why you couldn’t be there yourself,” she said softly. “I just wanted to see if you were okay.”   
  
She swayed on her feet, as if pushed by a breeze. Dale stepped back, pulling the door open and motioning for her to come in. “Do you want to sit down?”   
  
She paused on the threshold, peering around him and into his room. He detected a change in her; she was no longer fearful, but her hesitation and silence worried him all the same. She reached a hand out to grip the doorframe, to steady herself. “I shouldn’t have—I’m sorry—”   
  
Dale suddenly feared her retreat. “Audrey—” he said, reaching out towards her, grasping her by the elbow. “You don't look so well. Please, you should sit down. Have a glass of water.”   
  
He could tell that she was fighting the urge to cry. Still holding her elbow, he shut the door behind her as she entered his room; she pushed her hand against the wall, holding herself up.   
  
“There’s no one home.”   
  
Dale came around to stand in front of her. “No one?”   
  
Audrey simply shrugged. “Mother is in Seattle. Daddy is in meetings and on phone calls. Johnny is with his care worker,” she said, squeezing her eyes tight briefly before opening them and offering him a wide smile. Just like that. He could pinpoint the exact moment when the carefully crafted mask went on and the pain she had learned to hide for so many years disappeared from view.    
  
She faltered, barely, leaning forward towards him instead of away. But she never lost her smile. “My home is a hotel,” she whispered, ironic amusement creeping into her voice as tears filled her eyes. “I live in a hotel. I’ve been surrounded by people every night of my life since my first night on this planet, and yet I’m always alone…”   
  
"Audrey," Dale whispered. He reached his other hand out to her, stroking her upper arm. Audrey’s breath hitched and she grimaced. Cracks in the thin veneer were already forming, and the mask slid off completely when the first tears escaped her lashes. It didn’t take long at all for her to crumble, to take her first full step, and then a second, toward him in his arms.   
  
The relief Dale felt as she crashed into him bloomed outward from the centre of his chest, where Audrey’s head rested as she cried into his shirt. The buzzing was there too—like a radio tuner halfway between channels, his hearing grew fuzzy and indistinct and the air felt charged between and around the two of them. But he pushed past, focusing on the curve of Audrey’s middle back and where his hand fit against her, or the delicate scent of her hair wash, or the precise amount of pressure he could apply to stop her sobs from shaking her whole body without squeezing her so hard he hurt her.   
  
They stood like this, perfectly still and silent, for a long moment before Dale lifted his hand to stroke her hair, and Audrey pulled away. The second her body vacated his, he felt the aching pang of the loss of her. He hadn’t realized how badly he needed an embrace until the moment she had offered one, and he was now so desperate to have that moment back.   
  
He lifted a hand to her cheek and brushed away a tear. “Are you okay?”   
  
“I am now.”   
  
He sighs.  _ Me too. _ “You shouldn’t be unattended, not after having spent a night in the hospital,” he heard himself saying to her as he stepped aside and gestured into the room. “Come in. Please.”   
  
Audrey’s eyes searched his face. “If I come in…I’m afraid I won’t want to leave.”   
  
Her honesty was refreshing even if it scared him. Because if Dale was being totally honest with himself, he would have had to admit that he felt the same way. He was half-tired and fully aware of the magnetic pull keeping her within arms’ reach; he didn’t want to know how it felt to watch her walk away.   
  
_ Nothing will happen _ , he thought.  _ She’s hurt. You’re tired. You've both been through a trying ordeal. She has no one. She shouldn't be alone. And you shouldn't be alone. There is nothing wrong with helping a friend…and you are friends…  _ __   
  
“Come on,” he heard himself say.    
  
Audrey stepped into the room, eyeing the mess on the bed.   
  
“I’m really so sorry for disturbing you,” she muttered.    
  
“It’s okay," he replied as he set about cleaning up, clearing the room service dishes and stacking the papers and returning the tapes to the box he’d been keeping them in, before arranging them at the foot of the bed and clearing space for her to sit. 

Audrey seemed curious but didn’t ask anything; she sniffled and dabbed at the tip of her nose with the sleeve of her sweater.    
  
"You can stay here as long as you need to," he told her.  _ Is this inappropriate? _ he wondered, but… _ No, she’s upset...and you’re here… _   
  
She glanced at the bed again, reaching a hand out to absently smooth out a wrinkle in the coverlet. "Aren’t you and Laura still together?"   
  
Dale felt his face grow hot and was grateful to be ensconced in shadow. He gulped, unsure about what to say, how much to admit. "No. That was…well, it was…it shouldn't have happened."  _ Truth, without admitting anything else... _ _   
_   
Audrey nodded, sniffling, her thumb pressed to the tip of her nose, before crawling onto the mattress and tucking her legs beneath her. "Because she was involved in one of your cases?"   
  
Dale nodded slowly.    
  
Audrey swiped at her nose again. "Were  _ we _ a mistake too?"   
  
He tipped his head to the side and regarded her gently as he sat back to perch on the edge of the desk. He honestly didn’t know how to answer her and he couldn’t tell her why, but he didn’t have the ability to lie so openly about something like this. Part of him, deep down, had relaxed into this moment, and he was falling at ease. He felt words on his lips, threatening the backs of his teeth, borne from deep within and carried forward by instincts and desires he could never name in polite company.    
  
_ We could never be a mistake… _   
  
He didn’t know how he could possibly know that, but he  _ felt  _ it, even if he chided himself for thinking it. He knew better. The Audrey he remembered and the Audrey sitting in front of him could be one and the same or they could be so very different, and he had no way of knowing that right now. Yet he couldn’t help but think that maybe he had been wrong to push her away in haste, and that maybe this _other_ Agent Cooper realized that where he himself had been unable to.   
  
_ Nothing will happen tonight _ , he reminded himself, as he realized that Audrey had begun talking again.   
  
"Because I know you fought with Sheriff Truman about us, and—"   
  
"Audrey..."   
  
She looked up at him and seemed stricken, as if waiting for the admonishment that was sure to come. Her eyes widened and her face blanched.    
  
Instead, he smiled. "We can talk about all of that tomorrow. It doesn't have to be right now."   
  
She nodded. "Okay."   
  
"You should rest," he told her. “Get some sleep if you can"   
  
"But where will you—?"    
  
Dale hadn't thought that far ahead; luckily, he had a ready reply, even if it was a slight exaggeration. "I can sleep pretty much anywhere," he told her, adding: "It's a gift that's come in handy over the years. Sleeping on planes, in cars, at borrowed desks while away on assignment…”   
  
Audrey's eyes fluttered shut and she sighed, relaxing visibly as he talked. “You can have the bed,” she said, pushing herself up onto her knees. “Or…I mean, I don’t mind…if you wanted to…together—I don’t mean  __ together  obviously, but…"   
  
She froze there, unsure about what to do next, and Dale was struck by the awkwardness she presented. It was unlike her to be so shy, tongue-tied. It made him wonder what conversations they’d had that would make her react in such a way… 

_ Perhaps you’ll never know _ , he thought.  _ You’ll just have to assume… _

Audrey braced her hands against the blanket, and Dale could see her flexing each finger into the fabric, one at a time, right hand mirroring the left. As she sat there chewing her lip in silence, finally she reached over and began flipping through his transcripted notes beside her on the mattress.

“Are these your case notes?”

Watch her thumbing through the pages and pages of his dictation made him nervous, but he nodded, swallowing his anxiety as much as possible. “Sort of. Not official.”

She glanced over at him and then down at the pages before setting them to rights again. “I didn’t read anything important,” she said. “I wasn’t trying to snoop.”

“I didn’t think you were.”

Somehow she’d read him, his insecurities, and had figured out his discomfort even though he’d said nothing.  _ I’m too tired to keep up a charade _ , he thought to himself, and that fact rankled. But he felt it—his fatigue sitting low and tremulous in his limbs, making each movement feel like it was being made in a pool of molasses—as he stood up, admitting defeat and acquiescing to Audrey’s needs, as well as to his own. 

“Okay,” he told her.   
  
“Okay?”    
  
He walked over to the bed and picked up the documents and tapes, setting them on the floor, before going to the clock side of the bed and sitting down. The mattress squealed in protest as he turned to face her.    
  
“Until you fall asleep,” he told her as he reclined against the pillows, bringing his legs up onto the bed and crossing them at the ankles.   
  
Audrey took a long time to move, and when she finally did lay down her body was stiff and angular next to his as she tried to keep a respectful, respectable, distance between them in this most intimate of shared spaces. But after a moment she rolled onto her side, facing him.   
  
“Thank you,” she whispered, leaning up on one elbow to press a kiss to his cheek, just above his jaw.    
  
Dale fixed the moment in his memory as best he could before she pulled away and snuggled down into the pillows, folding her hands beneath her cheek as she closed her eyes. He turned to look at her, watching as her features relaxed and softened. It calmed him to see her calm. 

“Dale?”

_ Her calling you by your first name,  _ he thought.  _ That’s gonna take some getting used to.  _ “Hm?”

“Who’s Diane?" 

He stifled a yawn and smiled.  _ You read more than you let on,  _ he chided her. “Diane is my assistant.”

“In Philadelphia?”

“Yes.”

“And she’s the one you address your tapes to?” she asked, her voice growing more dream-like as she spoke “She types up everything you say into your little tape recorder and sends it back?”

“Mm-hmm,” he intoned, sleep licking at the edges of his words.

“Oh,” she replied, pausing. “Is she pretty?”

Dale counted three breaths before answering. “Well, Audrey, I wouldn’t want to comment on another woman’s appearance. Beauty is a subjective thing. What one person finds beautiful is a matter of personal taste…”

He watched her face as she frowned, clearly not the recipient of the answer she wanted. 

“Did you two ever date?”

Dale had to laugh; relaxing even more, he rolled up onto his side to look at her. “No,” he replied. “The FBI generally frowns upon interoffice fraternization between agents and their assistants. We maintain strictly professional boundaries, Diane and I.”

Audrey had grown thoughtful and quiet. “What about between agents?” she asked finally.

Watching her like this, Dale felt himself growing ever-more sleepy. He scoured his brain for an answer to her question. “As long as two people aren’t working directly together or in any kind of supervisory capacity over one another…

He trailed off, but the end of the sentence was implied, and Audrey understood it. She uttered her reply with the soft intonation of a dream. “That’s good,” she whispered. She took a deep breath, one that shuddered within her chest on the inhale and caused the hair on his arms to stand up as she exhaled. “I think I’d like to be an FBI Agent some day…”

Her breathing evened out; everything about her relaxed into sleep. His own heart raced thinking about the implications of what she was saying. It didn’t take much to read between the lines.

_ You don’t know me _ , he thought.  _ And I don’t know you. Whatever it is you’re feeling… you’re feeling it about someone else. And until I figure this out, I don’t know what to say to you… how to act, what to do… _

But that was tomorrow’s problem. Nothing would get solved worrying about it here, and he was tired and she was sleeping and it was so late…

Rolling over—gently, to avoid waking her—he turned off the lamp beside the bed, leaving only the lamp on the desk with its dim illumination to light the room. Sleep was threatening to claim him and keep him all night anyway; he didn’t think there was much harm in allowing himself the space for repose.

Before he knew it, he had drifted off as well.


	11. Chapter 11

It was still dark outside when Dale opened his eyes, awaking from a deep sleep without the faintest recollection of any of his dreams. It was alarming; his nocturnal journeys were usually vivid and fresh the moment he awoke, often taking hours to fully dissipate from his consciousness; to wake up in the void where his dreams might otherwise exist was frightening. But this, he quickly discovered, was not the only thing to concern him.    
  
He found himself beneath the blankets on the bed, with his arm draped around a slumbering Audrey’s waist. Her back pressed against his chest; her hand was entwined with his, clasped against her. 

They were sharing a pillow. His nose was pressed into her hair. She smelled fragrant, warm and sleepy; he inhaled, quietly, hoping not to wake her.

It was in vain. Audrey stirred, rolling onto her back; Dale leaned up over her as she opened her eyes, and in the warm light from the desk, he could see her blushing.

"What time is it?"

"Early," he replied, even though he didn’t know exactly—it was an educated guess, based on the ink black skies behind the curtains in the window. "You should go back to sleep."

She sighed and closed her eyes, and Dale watched her for a moment before carefully and slowly pulling himself away from her, hoping not to wake her up. As he rested back against his own pillow, he yawned and scrubbed a hand over his face.

It hadn’t been the most restorative sleep of his life, but it was nothing a stout cup of coffee couldn’t fix. He wondered if it was too early to head to the station; Harry wouldn’t be there yet, but perhaps he could get a few more hours of work in before the meeting with Major Briggs.  _ Hopefully Harry was able to set something up _ ...he thought to himself. There had been no confirmations the day before; everything was up in the air.

_ Not the most ideal way to continue an investigation _ , he thought.  _ But you’ve dealt with worse. _

He glanced back at Audrey, sleeping soundly once again, and exhaled, with enough force to move her hair against her cheek in the breeze he’d created.

_ Hiccups and roadblocks are part of the job,  _ he thought. “Sometimes you’ve just got to go with it,” he said to himself. He dragged himself out of bed and stretched, then began the slow trek around the end of the bed and towards the bathroom, without turning on any extra lights or making any unnecessary noise; he showered quickly—the faint memory of sleep losing its grip on his mind and body and dissipating along with the steam—and got dressed, tidying the room a bit before finally settling his mind about what to do with the young woman buried under the quilt and fast asleep on his bed.

_ Let her sleep _ , he thought as he adjusted his tie at the foot of the bed and put his suit jacket on. He picked up the box of microcassette tapes from the floor and set them on the desk. From the fresh package of blank tapes, he pulled two brand new ones and placed one in his pocket and the other in his recorder, setting the old one from the night before down beside the box—he’d label and mail it to Diane later.

He then wrote a quick note for Audrey— _ A reversal of roles _ , he thought, remembering with fondness the simple days when notes from Audrey slipped under his door had been the norm. He signed his name and folded the single page in half before walking it over to his side of the bed and tenting it on his pillow.

It was barely six am. He resolved to find a cup of coffee, have some breakfast, and call down to the Sheriff’s station, to see how his day was going to continue.

* * *

Dale pulled up in front of the Briggs’s modest bungalow and shut the car off. It was just after noon, the agreed upon meeting time that Harry had arranged wih Betty the evening before after Dale had gone home. Without saying so specifically, Betty had made it clear that Major Briggs was not keen on company but would agree to see Dale, alone; Harry had protested, but even that morning Dale had recognized that this was something he was going to have to do this himself.

Harry waited back at the sheriff’s station on account, unhappy and sulking about it.

Dale found himself filled with nervous energy as he walked up the long sidewalk to the front door. It was a beautiful day, cloudless and warm, with a gentle breeze that bore the promise of spring; there was no need for a coat, and Dale felt hot in his dark jacket. The Briggs home, however, was shut up tight—drapes drawn, no windows open, shade from the tall trees in the front yard casting long shadows over the house.

_ It’s been weeks since anyone has talked to him _ , Harry had said.  _ I hope you’ll tell him that we hope he’s okay _ .

Looking up at the gloom in front of him, Dale wondered himself if maybe everything was not okay after all.

He cleared his throat and pressed his thumb to the doorbell. Betty answered the door, her face drawn for a split second before transforming before Dale’s eyes to become typically cheery.

“Agent Cooper,” she smiled as she opened the screen door outward onto the step. Dale moved to hold the door ajar, and Betty took the opportunity to step out herself. She wrung her hands on her apron. “I’d shake your hand but I’ve been making meatballs.”

“That’s quite all right, Mrs. Briggs,” Cooper said.

“Please,” she smiled. “Call me Betty.”

A small sliver of sunlight streamed in between the two tallest trees flanking the walkway on the south-facing lawn. Lifting her face to it, she smiled even more broadly. “Beautiful day, isn’t it?”

Dale smiled. “Certainly is,” he said, looking around himself. “Spring is around the corner.”

Betty sighed and grew silent. Eyes closed, upturned face smiling at the sun, she looked suddenly angelic, and Dale was overcome with a sense of peace, a feeling that disappeared the moment he peered into the darkness of the house within. A cold draft seemed to sweep out onto the step from behind Betty; Dale wasn’t sure if he was imagining it or not, but he shivered anyway in spite of the sun’s warmth.

“It’s about time to start thinking about the garden,” she whispered, calling his attention back to her. “I’ve got tulips and a few other bulbs already started. Thought I’d try something new this year.”

“My mother used to plant tulips,” Dale said, remembering the beautiful and brightly coloured flowers that used to line their Philadelphia sidewalk. For the first time in many years—since before he’d gone into the Red Room—he missed his mother terribly.

The feeling of longing didn’t disappear as Betty smiled at him, genuine happiness spreading across her face. “They’re such cheerful plants,” she intoned. “Always happy, always smiling.”

Dale nodded, once more peering into the house, struck by the opposition between the darkness within and the bright woman on its porch.

Betty noticed, and with unease of her own creeping into her body language, she stood taller, with perfect posture, and her smile disappeared. “Would you like to come in?”

Dale suddenly wasn’t sure. Still, he nodded. “Thank you,” he said.

He was met by Betty’s sad smile as she turned around and backed up into the dark home. “Pardon the mess,” she whispered.

Dale smiled, accepting her apology even though he saw no mess; hers was the same blanket apology he’d heard a hundred times before, in a hundred different homes he’d walked into as an agent of the Bureau. He also recognized the same, thin weariness in Betty’s voice that he’d heard in Sarah’s voice once upon a time: this was a woman who was barely holding on.

He looked around him—the living room on his right was shadowed; the dining room beyond that was dark too. Only the light from the kitchen—where she’d been spending her day—spilled out into the house.

Betty’s smile returned, though he was less convinced than ever that it was genuine. “Garland is downstairs,” she said softly. “He’s expecting you.”

Dale nodded and followed the line of Betty’s arm as she pointed towards a closed door. He walked to it, opened it, and descended into the Briggs’s basement.

The long stairwell doubled back on itself after eight steps. Boxes were stacked on every step leading down to the landing, waist-high and haphazard in placement, making navigating the stairwell tricky in the best of circumstances, which these were not; a single dim light bulb fixed to the ceiling cast low-wattage illumination on Dale’s surroundings. It sputtered in and out intermittently, sometimes for several seconds, and Dale held his breath in the darkness as he waited for the light to show him where his next step ought to be.

On the landing, he found six neatly stacked Bankers Boxes, two high; the top boxes all had their lids removed, and Dale peered into each one as he passed, surveying their contents.

_ Newspapers _ , he thought with a cold shiver as he skimmed a hand over the broadsheets. Copies of the Seattle  _ Post-Intelligencer  _ and the Portland  _ Tribune _ ; unheard of newspapers from San Bernardino and Pasadena, Lake Tahoe and Roswell. The ones he could see were dated as far back as forty years earlier in some cases.

The one thing they all had in common was talk about extraterrestrials.

Dale felt his stomach sink as he rounded the corner and lost what little light there was. In near pitch-blackness, he skirted the boxes and slid down the remaining half dozen steps to the cool, damp basement floor.

He found Major Briggs sitting at a long desk, illuminated only by a single task lamp on the corner. He was hunched over a pile of paper; books stacked on either side of him obscured what he was doing, but Dale figured he must have been writing. The man looked disheveled, more unkempt than Dale could remember seeing him. Gone was the familiar military blazer, replaced with a rumpled cardigan over a white cotton undershirt. He looked to have been unshaven; stubble shadowed his jawline.

“Major Briggs?”

Garland looked up from his work. He squinted past the glare of the light to see into the relative darkness of the surrounding basement. Eventually, his eyes adjusted; recognition dawned on his face.

“Out of the woods comes the Dale,” he said. “It is good to see you again, Agent Cooper.”

“Likewise, Major,” Dale replied as he cautioned through the darkness to reach the table.

Major Briggs lowered his eyes to the page in front of him again. “I must confess I was surprised it took so long for you reach out to me,” Garland said.

“But it’s only been—”

Briggs looked up from his papers briefly. “Time is irrelevant, Agent Cooper,” he said, looking down at his page yet again. “But I suppose you’re coming to that realization, or will shortly. ”

Dale shivered involuntarily. “I don’t understand what you mean.”

Garland leaned back in his chair. “You’ve come a long way to be here with us, haven’t you?”

“What are you saying, Major?”

Garland steepled his fingers beneath his chin, his eyes narrowing as he considered what to say next. “My work has comprised a number of different areas of interest over the years, but has mainly been limited to the woods outside Twin Peaks,” he said, flicking his eyes up to Dale’s after a momentary pause. “How do you find the trees in our little corner of the world, Agent Cooper?”

Perplexed by the line of questioning, Dale answered simply. “Never seen anything quite like it.”

Briggs nodded, but his tone when he spoke was less than approving; if Dale had been in a betting mood, in that moment he would have put serious money on the fact that Major Briggs was—uncharacteristically—frightened. “One can understand the forces that drove our earliest ancestors to this area. The men who settled this land a hundred years ago, built the first great estates, named the town and put it on the map. The ones who saw the trees here and made their fortunes out of the felling and processing of vast swaths of these old growth forests.” He paused and took a deep breath, and as he exhaled the angst in his voice disappeared. “Majestic Douglas firs, towering lodgepole pine, the proud Ponderosa, and—closer to the coast—gnarled and crooked arbutus, fragrant cedar trees,” he said. “They’re captivating. Beautiful. Terrifying.”

_ I agree with you there,  _ Dale thought.

“They stand guard,” Briggs continued. “Sentinels. They watch us. They hear what we say. They know more than we could ever imagine.”

“Trees,” Dale repeated. His fear was piqued, and he remembered his gut reaction upon seeing the trees outside Harry’s home two nights earlier.

“We cut these trees down to this day. Their destruction is our lifeblood. It’s what keeps this town going, keeps us all employed. The  _ true _ people of this land—the  _ first _ peoples, Coast Salish, Chinook, and others further north along the Canadian west coast—these people revered the trees they saw. They thought of them as their ancestors. Even today, it is hard to imagine walking into a forest grove without feeling the arboreal splendour, but more than that, to not become entranced with awe at one’s surroundings. They would never allow for such carnage in this wondrous landscape…”

He picked up the book on his desk and flipped to a page which Dale could see was heavily dog-eared.

“Each tree has a sacred meaning,” he continued, as he stood up and disappeared into the darkness behind his desk before re-emerging. He was holding the book in his hands, offering it to Dale. “Some were seen as signs and symbols of strength, others imbued with various medicinal benefits…”

The book Dale took in his hands was old, its spine weathered and cracked. He couldn’t read the title. But the page the Major had left it open on contained only one entry.

“Sycamore trees?” Dale asked, feeling his stomach knot.

“The ancient Egyptians believed that sycamore trees represented rebirth. They were heavily associated with the sun god, Ra, who died every night only to be born again the next morning. An endless cycle. A loop. Around, and around, and around...”

_ A ring of sycamores… _

The Major continued. “There are legends of this land, too. That the sycamore represents a path between the world of the living and that of the dead,” he said. “A gateway, if you will.”

“...An opening to a gateway,” Dale whispered, repeating the words he’d heard Margaret Lanterman issue on the night of the pageant.

“You know what I’m speaking of, don’t you Agent Cooper?”

Dale nodded. “Yes, sir, I believe I do.”

“I know you have been to Glastonbury Grove,” Briggs said. “The circle of sycamores. A portal, a…gateway. To another world. One in which the living have no right to exist.” He paused, again. “I know you went beyond, and I know you’ve come back, but this is not where you belong.”

It was what he believed; it was what he wanted to prove was true. Hearing this from Major Briggs himself nearly made his knees buckle. He reached out to steady himself on the desk. “Major Briggs,” he said, his voice thin.

Briggs led him to a chair. “Agent Cooper, are you all right?”

Dale nodded. “I have been labouring for the last two days to prove that what you’re saying is true, but with no one but me to validate what I’m suggesting…” he shivered. “I thought it entirely possible that I was losing my mind.”

“I can assure you, it is true.”

“How do you know?”

Briggs stood up and cleared his throat. “Because…it happened to me, too.”

Dale looked up but said nothing.

Briggs returned to his seat on the other side of the desk and closed the books in front of him. “We went night fishing, you and me,” he began. “I disappeared. When I came back, I was aware that a vast span of time had elapsed from the moment I disappeared to the moment of my return, though I could remember little of what had transpired. Images, really, and nothing more.”

“Images of what?”

Briggs lowered his voice conspiratorially. “Trees, Agent Cooper. Images of trees.”

Dale shivered. “I don’t remember you telling me this.”

At this, Major Briggs’s eyes widened. He grabbed a pen and began to write. “My counterpart in your world  _ also  _ experienced this same phenomenon?”

“Yes,” Dale said, leaning forward to hazard a glance at the Major’s notes, though he could see nothing. “You said you couldn’t remember much. Then you told us about your involvement with Project Blue Book.”

Briggs looked up at him then. “I never told you that here,” he said.

“I know,” Dale offered. “Harry tells me he had no information about your disappearance, where you went, your involvement with Blue Book or your search for the White Lodge…”

Briggs shook his head. “No, I-I...I needed to figure out what I had seen. To process it. To understand and come to terms with the fact that time and life as we know it is not at all what it truly is.”

“And what is it?” Dale asked, breathless with anticipation.

Major Briggs pressed the side of his clenched fist to his mouth. “I’m so close,” he whispered, looking over his books. “It’s the trees. The trees are the answer. All these years we’ve been looking  _ away  _ from the trees but we must look  _ within _ them. They’re the open wound surrounding this town, the thing that makes all of this  _ possible... _ ”

Dale watched as the composed Major devolved into a man trembling with fear and anxiety. He ranted under his breath about owls and life events written in tree rings, until he finally turned, wild-eyed, towards Dale.

“Who else knows you’re here?”

Dale shook his head. “Sheriff Truman,” he said. “He’s the only one who—”

“You need to go back. You can’t stay here.”

“But how do I get back?”

Major Briggs simply shook his head as he panicked. “No, no, no…” he said. “There is great evil here. I need more time!”

Nervous and more than a little on edge, Dale forced himself to remain calm. “Garland…”

“Change and constancy…where is the change and where are things always the same?”

_ Is he asking me?  _ Dale wondered, feeling himself deflate as he realized Major Briggs was far gone, too far gone to help him. Maybe even too far gone to be helped. The more he raved, the more Dale was convinced of it, and the more he wanted to leave.

“You must find the constant,” Briggs said. “The common denominator.”

Dale stood up. “I will, sir. I-I…”

“Go!” Briggs said. “Now!”

Dale didn’t question him, but turned on his heel and quickly retraced his steps to the main floor, where Betty stood, arms crossed in front of her, nervously chewing on a loose thumbnail.

“Betty—”

“He’s not himself,” she said. “He hasn’t been himself in weeks. Just sits down there in the dark with his books, afraid that someone might be watching.”

“I-I wish I knew—”

“He’s going to make me cut down all the trees, Agent Cooper,” she said. She had tears in her eyes. “Every last one of them. He doesn’t trust the trees.”

Dale nodded. The clock on the wall behind her told him he’d only been down there for fifteen minutes, but it was fifteen minutes he was never going to forget. He wanted nothing more than to retreat, as fast as possible, from the deep trench he felt had been dug in and around this home. He didn’t feel safe. Nothing felt right.

“I must go back to the station, Mrs. Briggs,” he told her, grimacing, hating the waver in his voice. “I’m sorry.”

She simply nodded, resigning herself to what was happening to her family. He felt for her; truly, he did. But there was little he could do for the man in the basement.

Stepping out into the spotless afternoon sunshine was a relief. It took him several minutes to shake the chill from his skin.

He drove away down the street at a terrific clip, breaking several local laws regarding speed limits and appropriate stopping times at regulated intersections. When he pulled into the sheriff’s station parking lot, he was breathing normally; his heart rate had returned to normal. But he couldn’t shake the uneasiness that had settled over him. None of what he’d experienced felt real; he’d been scrubbed of the deafening morosity inside the Briggs’s home, but now he felt like it had been nothing but a dream.

_ Who’s to say it wasn’t?  _ he thought to himself.

He shut off the engine and exhaled loudly as he pushing his way out of the car, onto the asphalt, and up the stairs into the station.


	12. Chapter 12

Sheriff Truman was pacing in the lobby when Dale pushed his way through the doors of the Twin Peaks Sheriff's Department. 

“Coop,” he said. “Wasn’t expecting you back so soon…”

Dale managed a weary, lopsided grin. “Looks like you didn’t even leave the lobby, Harry.”

The sheriff ignored the jab as he glanced around and lowered his voice. “Find anything?”

Dale nodded towards Harry’s office. He didn’t start talking until they were inside, with the door latched shut behind them.

“Well?”

Dale removed his coat and slung it over the back of the chair. “Harry, Major Briggs is very unwell,” he started. “He’s a shadow of his former self.”

“Physically ill?”

Dale shook his head. “Psychologically. He spent most of our brief time together talking about conspiracies and the mythological underpinnings of the trees native to this area. Stuff about owls, about the logging industry in Twin Peaks maybe being the source of the supernatural strife that has caused all of this to happen. He certainly mentioned the fact that his work has been focusing on the forests for some time now." Dale paused. "Did you know that? About the nature of his work?”

Harry shook his head. “Did you?”

Dale nodded slowly. “ _All of life is recorded in trees_ …”

“What’s that?”

“Something Briggs said,” Dale recounted slowly. “I don’t know what it means. What any of it means. But I don’t think he’s going to be much help going forward.” He sat down in the chair he’d thrown his coat on. “What  _ was  _ interesting was that he and I experienced the same thing—of that I am fairly certain.”

“He time traveled?”

“In essence,” Dale said. “He believes he did, at any rate. But his reaction to his own disappearance startles me. It is much more in keeping with how you might expect someone to react. He'a paranoid, afraid.”

"That's not how you're reacting."

Dale sighed. “Perhaps the fact that he doesn’t remember where he went or how long he was gone is the reason for that key difference, because I remember everything. Or maybe he was gone for much longer, and that is why he, for lack of a better word, snapped.” Dale paused and counted his breaths, in and out, until he reached ten. Haltingly, his voice frying as he spoke, he continued: “I do not know how to help him, or Betty. I am simply…at a loss. ”

“Well that’s not your job, is it?” Harry reminded him. “You have to figure this out, get home…”

“He mentioned that too,” Dale said. “The fact of my presence eventually seemed to startle him into something akin to panic. He begged me to leave, to find a way home.”

“How?”

Dale shrugged. “I don’t know. I don’t think he knows either.”

At that, Dale couldn’t help but yawn, the urge overwhelming him entirely despite his best efforts to stop it. He shook his head. “Excuse me, Harry.”

“Long night?”

Dale nodded. “Stayed up reading my case notes, the transcripts from my tapes. Then—” he stopped himself just short of explaining Audrey’s arrival, blinking his eyes and pinching the bridge of his nose instead. “Well, it was odd being back in my room, knowing it wasn’t actually mine.”

“I can imagine,” Harry said. “Maybe you should knock off early. Get some rest.”

Dale shook his head. “Harry, there are things that need doing, and—”

“And we’ll do them,” he said. “As far as I'm concerned, you’re off the clock.”

_ Off the clock _ …Dale thought, suddenly reminded of his supervisor and the explanation that would have to be forthcoming about where he went and what happened. “I need to phone Gordon, tell him—”

“Not necessary,” Harry interjected again. “He called not five minutes after you left. Says he’ll be flying out as soon as he can, but that you’re to rest.” Harry shrugged. “If you won’t listen to me, you’ll have to listen to your boss.”

Dale was disappointed by saw no way around it. He  _ did  _ want to get back to his notes, and if he had a spare hour, a cat nap wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world either. “As long as there aren’t any pressing issues here that you need help with.”

Harry shook his head. “None we can’t handle,” he said. “But rest assured, you’ll be the first to know if there is.”

“I appreciate that,” Dale smiled as he stood up. “Well, then I suppose…”

“Yeah," Harry said, smiling tightly. "Right.”

It was awkward, and Dale had only one explanation why: every new piece of the puzzle brought him closer to answers that would lead him away from these people, this place. He didn’t want to forge friendships with individuals he would hopefully be leaving behind.

Not that he could tell  _ them  _ that.

He cleared his throat. “Maybe I’ll grab lunch on the way,” he muttered, checking his pockets for his wallet— _ Do I even have any money in there? _ he wondered as he pulled the wallet out and counted the bills inside. 

“Norma’s cooking is always a good idea,” Harry replied, ushering him out into the lobby.

“You’ll call if you need anything?” Dale asked. “Anything at all?”

“Anything at all,” the sheriff replied. “Just go on, order a big cup o’ joe, a lunch plate special, and a slice of cherry pie and then take a load off. Y’hear?”

Dale nodded and sighed as he excused himself and made his way out of the lobby, into his car—engine still warm, from its previous use as well as from the rays of that hot spring sunshine—and up the road towards the Double R.

* * *

It wasn’t until Dale pulled up to the diner that he realized that he hadn’t been around this many people in what—to him—felt like a quarter-century. He parked where he could and stayed locked inside for several long minutes while he screwed up the courage to be face the dwindling lunch crowd.

“You can do this…” he said, shutting his eyes, stomach quavering. He keyed off the ignition and stepped out of the car, bolstered by the sunshine yet again as he walked across the parking lot and into the diner.

It wasn't the crowd inside that bothered him; in fact there wasn't a crowd at all. What pricked him was that all the preparation in the world couldn’t have helped him face the terrific moment of sadness as he realized Annie wasn't there. The sensation hit him squarely in the chest, sucking the air from his lungs. He may have audibly gasped as the moment presented itself; if not, he certainly appeared stricken, because Norma noticed and stopped wiping the countertops long enough to alight to his side.

“Agent Cooper?” she asked. “Are you okay?”

Hearing her voice was grounding, and he closed his eyes and nodded. “Yes, Norma, thank you. Just…dizzy,” he lied.

He felt Norma’s hand on his arm. “Let’s get you seated,” she said. “I’ll bring you some coffee.”

Dale couldn’t argue with that.

Taking his seat in the booth, he looked around the diner and found it much the same as he remembered it. It was strange, he noted, to feel nostalgia for something that hadn’t changed, and yet this was the only way to describe how he felt. It wasn’t the same Double R he remembered, but was more like a very good facsimile of it. Not that he was going to complain about it.

Only six other people sat within the diner. Four large truckers, whose trucks were taking up half the parking lot and whose bodies were taking up the booth in the front window, sat engaged in a rousing game of Mah Jong; two elderly women at the lunch counter were sipping from milkshakes and taking turns sketching on a large paper pad propped up against the counter, without a word spoken between them. There was no evidence of a lunch rush. Every surface gleamed, and floating there beneath the ever-present aroma of Norma’s coffee was the lingering scent of lavender from the cleaner. 

Norma returned with the coffee pot as Dale eyed the young waitress behind the counter, his thoughts still bent on Annie. It was odd to imagine that she didn’t exist at all; of all the things that made no sense in this situation, the complete removal of a whole person from one timeline to the next was the hardest to reconcile.    
  
Whether he was still struck by his entrance or whether he truly was dizzy, Dale couldn’t stop the words that came out of his mouth as Norma smiled at him and poured a steaming mug of coffee in front of him.

“Can I ask you something?” he began, and Norma nodded her assent. “Do you have a sister?”

“A sister?” Norma smiled, setting down the coffee pot. “No, I’m an only child. I always  _ wanted  _ a sister though.” She trailed off, a wistful smile on her lips. “My parents were quite a bit older than most. I was their ‘miracle baby.’ No opportunity for siblings, however desperate I might have been for one..”

Dale nodded.  _ Just checking _ , he thought to himself.

“I suppose that’s why I have such good relationships with the girls who work here. They are like my sisters, in a way,” Norma continued, uncharacteristically verbose. “Shelly, Heidi, Laura…”

As if on cue, the door to the diner swung open, bells tinkling, and Laura Palmer herself walked in, carrying a stack of empty trays and plastic dishes from the Meals on Wheels, which she set on the counter beside Norma’s washcloth and the bottle of purple spray cleaner. She lifted her arm and swept the back of her wrist against her brow, shoving aside her bangs before turning and looking directly at the two of them and smiling, beautifully and naturally, as she took the trays and dishes back to the kitchen to be washed and prepped for the evening deliveries.

Everything in the diner seemed to stop when Laura walked in—the old women at the counter paused their sketching, and the Mah Jong truckers’ eyes moved from their tiles to follow her as she walked around the counter to the back. Even Dale was transfixed. But he was positive he would never, ever get over the sight of a living, breathing,  _ smiling _ Laura Palmer, no matter how many days he spent in this place. Shaken didn’t come close to describing how he felt. He reached for his cup.

“Wanna talk about it?”

Dale had almost entirely forgotten that Norma was still standing there. He looked up at her and saw that she was grinning at him. 

“Talk about what?”

Norma glanced over her shoulder at the kitchen and slid into the booth opposite him. “The course of true love,” she said, lowering her voice as she leaned across the table. “You and Laura.”

Dale figured someone could have easily knocked him over with a feather.  _ Norma? Gossipping? With me?! _

He blanched. “Oh, I—uh…no, you’ve got that wrong. I—”

Norma seemed surprised. “Then it must be Audrey,” she said, changing tack by a hair. “How is she, by the way? I hear she was in the hospital overnight after you rescued her from the woods…”

But Dale just continued to shake his head. “Norma, I don’t know—”

“Don’t play coy with me, Agent Cooper,” she said. “When you run a diner, you learn to read people really well. I’ve seen the way you act. I figured you were sweet on  _ one  _ of them…”

He stared into the depths of his coffee and shook his head, trying to find a graceful way out of the conversation that was making his head spin for real. As much as he wanted to learn about this place and his “other self”, he was not ready to discuss the details of “his” love life in a half-empty diner over coffee with a woman he was quickly realizing he barely knew. 

When he looked up to find Norma still talking, he made a desperate Hail Mary pass, settling on the photos on the wall as a new topic of conversation. “Norma, sorry for interrupting, but I’ve been meaning to ask you about these photos. Are they new?”

Norma paused her train of thought and turned to glance at the wood-framed black and white photograph on the wall above the booth. “These? Gosh, I think they’ve been here as long as the building has. At least as long as I’ve owned the diner, anyway.”

He hadn’t really cared one way or another about the photos, but as she continued to talk, he studied them. They all seemed to be of lumberjacks standing over their arboreal conquests: piles of wood, huge tree stumps, towering firs and evergreens. The Major’s words rang in his ears:  _ ones who made their fortunes out of the felling and processing of vast swaths of these old growth forests… _

“One of the oldest trees in this area was cut down back in the 1950s I think, from near the intersection of Sparkwood and Highway Twenty-One, back when they were paving the road up to the mill,” Norma continued. “It was this massive sequoia, six hundred years old. They took a cross-section of the tree and mounted it on the wall of the Civic Hall downtown.”

“Is that so?” Dale asked, furrowing his brow. Part of him was piecing something together; he had no idea what it was, or when it would come, but he could feel it happening as he stared at the portrait beside him. The world around him melted away and there was nothing there except him and the photograph.

_ All of life is recorded in trees... _

He was dimly aware of Norma getting up to tend to a commotion in the kitchen; several long seconds turned to minutes as he contemplated the photograph. These men, he thought, who felled the forests. The ones Major Briggs blamed. 

Eventually he realized he was no longer alone, and he turned to face his tablemate again, assuming that Norma had returned.

“The Civic Hall, you said?” he asked. But as the words left his lips, he realized that it wasn’t Norma sitting across from him but Laura. He snapped up and back, spine ramrod straight. 

“Look,” she whispered to him, leaning across the table much as Norma had done earlier. “I know things were weird between us yesterday, and I’m sorry for that—”

“No,” Dale shook his head, struggling to find his voice. “No, it’s okay…”

She shut her eyes. “Let me finish, or I’ll lose my nerve,” she whispered, reaching for his hands, which he allowed her to grasp. “I  _ need _ to talk to you, Dale.”

The urgency in her voice was alarming, and Dale switched off the part of his brain that worried about how this might look to unknowing outsiders and honed in on his ever-present need to help. In that moment, in spite of all his discomfort, it became his singular focus.  

“I-I don’t know what’s happening, but…” Laura’s voice quavered as she trailed off and took a break. “But I just  _ know  _ that you’re the only person who can help…before someone gets hurt…”

When she opened her eyes they were filled to the brim with tears, and his concern multiplied.

“Laura?” he asked. “What is it? Who’s going to be hurt?”

She caught a sob in the back of her throat before it could tumble out, and she let go of his hands, swiping at tears as they one and then another dropped from her eyelashes. A grimace screwed across her face as she let go of his hands and slid out of the booth, averting her gaze. “Not here,” she whispered, pressing her fingers to her lips. “Not here...not here…”

Dale watched her stand up and brace herself against the edge of the table, her face contorting as she struggled to keep herself together. All trace of his earlier trepidation had vanished, and he reached over and covered her hand with his own, hoping to comfort, though he suspected the gesture was a token one; he hadn’t seen someone this frantic, this disjointed, since— 

_ Ronette _ ...

“Laura…”

She looked up at him and forced a smile that lit up her entire face, everywhere, except for her eyes; they remained lifeless and distant, pupils blown wide in absolute fear. She reached for a napkin and shoved her hand into her small fringed handbag, which Dale hadn’t noticed was slung across her body and rested against her hip. She retrieved a pen from the narrow confines of the leather bag and continued to mutter to herself as she scribbled on the napkin, her hand shaking. 

“I tutor Johnny today,” she said, and it took him a moment to realize she was no longer muttering but was addressing him. “His care worked drops him off at the hotel at four o’clock and I meet him there. I’ll be done by five.” She pushed the napkin at him, pressing it into his hand. “I can meet you then.”

Dale could only nod as he watched her smile—forced, again—before hurrying from the diner. The entire restaurant seemed to hold its breath, waiting until the sound of tinkling bells faded before continuing with their activities as if nothing had happened. Waking from his trance, Dale shook his head and noticed Norma, who was returning from the kitchen. She raised her hands in frustration before shoving them into the pockets of her apron.

“She left all the dishes on the counter,” Norma said. “Like I have time to…” she sighed. “This was her idea. I shouldn’t have to clean up after her.”

Dale forgot what he was holding in his hand, and suddenly glanced down at the napkin Laura had given him. He’d spent hours going over her diary; he knew her handwriting inside and out, and was positive he could have identified it anywhere. This, however, was the handwriting of a different person, someone affected by something bad. Once-smooth loops were broken and angular, long strokes rendered jittery by the shake in her hand. It was Laura’s handwriting, but it was no Laura that he’d endeavoured to know. 

_ White Tail Ballroom. 5:00pm. Please. _

He shook his head and shoved the napkin into his pocket before retrieving his wallet and pulling out a handful of bills, more than enough to cover the coffee he’d consumed. He lay the cash on the table and slid out of the booth.

“Norma, it was a pleasure talking to you."

“Off so soon?” 

He offered the barest of shrugs. “Paperwork,” he fibbed.

Norma seemed understanding, and smiled after him as he followed in Laura’s charged wake through the double doors and out into the street, though no further than that. He walked to his car, keyed the ignition, and peeled out of the lot towards the hotel, only realizing once he’d made it onto the street that he was starving and hadn’t eaten yet.

_ I’m going to make very good friends with the room service staff _ , he sighed to himself. 

But even that would have to wait.

As he pulled up to the first intersection past the Double R, he spotted the Civic Hall on his left, its empty parking lot beckoning. 

He had a stop to make first…


	13. Chapter 13

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cooper has yet another run-in with a desperate Laura, before receiving bad news...

“Had a very productive day, Diane. Spent three hours at the Civic Hall and the attached local history museum, guided by the sole volunteer attendant—a lovely woman named Adaline who is hundred years old if she’s a day. She showed me around and told me more about the town of Twin Peaks than I could have learned from anyone else. A true treasure, and I'm glad to have been able to spend the afternoon with her, as my morning left me much affected...

“My meeting with Major Briggs today was...troubling. His path has led him on much the same journey as the one I find myself on, though its effects on him are very different. Very different, indeed. He is a man deteriorated, someone of brilliant intellect who now lives so much in his own mind that he can scarcely function except to speak in riddles and circles. He explained to me that the trees held the answers, which was puzzling to say the least, but it led  _ me  _ down a path that I can only hope will lead me home.

“Adaline showed me a cross section of the largest tree in Twin Peaks, so the story goes, and I confess that I spent more than two hours total examining it. It’s a remarkable thing, Diane. This town that has grown up entirely around the logging industry. Their reverence towards the trees, the providers of their lifeblood, borders on the religious. And yet they must destroy the thing they need most in order to profit from it. Major Briggs spoke of this, too, in his own way. 

“That’s what drew me to the cross section, Diane. All of life is recorded in trees, he said. And here was a piece of a tree, a literal slice of time, from the sprouting of a seed to the moment it was cut down. If you count the tree rings, you are like a time traveller. You can read the history of drought and bounty in the spaces between the tree rings. You can see where the bark was scarred by insects and forest fire, where animals may have rubbed against it and caused large sections of the outer bark to wear away year after year, altering the tree’s circumference. 

“It’s a natural history, mind you. The history of man is not written on trees in this way. We cut the trees down and grind them into pulp and write our stories on paper. It’s ultimately destructive…but  _ this _ , this is different. This is the slow march forward, largely unimpeded by the hand of man. Breathtaking, Diane. It’s really something. And in the grand scheme of things, I believe it must be related to what Major Briggs spoke of...but how?

“Anyway, I’ve just paid my bill for a very late lunch—might as well call it supper and have done with it, actually—in the Timber Room at the Great Northern. It’s not quite five o’clock. I agreed to meet Laura upstairs outside one of the ballrooms. She was absolutely insistent, and I was powerless to say no. I had no reason to. Laura needs help. That much is abundantly clear. And she seemed reluctant to ask me for it. Why, I don’t know. But I’m determined to find out.”

* * *

 

Dale clicked off the recorder and slipped it into his pocket as he stepped into the lobby; beneath his arm was a bundle of paper, sketches from the Civic Hall, of tree rings and bark patterns, carefully stacked and collated for later perusal; he was looking forward to a night of quiet reflection, with nothing but his thoughts and these sketches to keep him company.

As he made his way through the lobby, he saw Randy behind the concierge desk motioning at him with a wide smile on his face. 

“Agent Cooper,” he smiled. “It’s nice to see you.”

“Thank you, Randy,” Dale replied. “Been off for a few days, have you?”

Randy nodded. “It was my weekend,” he said. He turned to the mail slots behind the desk and a bundle of mail out of the slot marked 315. “You have quite a few messages,” he said as he handed them across the counter.

Dale looked down at the stack in his hand. The top envelope was from Philadelphia—FBI Human Resources, to be precise—and beneath that was a large unaddressed manila envelope. Curious, he turned it over in his hand. 

“That was delivered by Miss Horne this afternoon,” Randy said. 

_ Audrey?  _ Dale wondered as he looked at the package. He hadn’t thought of her all day; suddenly, the hazy memories of waking up next to her flooded back, and he felt a blush creep into his cheeks. “Did she say anything?”

“Only that she wanted this delivered as soon as we saw you,” Randy told him. He reached out and handed three more slips of paper to Dale. “Calls we took, for you. From Sheriff Truman.”

Dale took the slips.  _ Maybe it was ill-advised to spend the afternoon at a local tourist stop _ , he wondered. “Did Sheriff Truman say anything else? Am I to call him back or return to the station?”

“It didn’t seem urgent. The last time, he said he just wanted to check in.”

_ Anxious Harry _ , Dale thought.  _ Curious… _

“Well, thank you Randy,” Dale said with a friendly smile. “You’re a credit to the hospitality industry.”

“Thank you sir,” Randy returned with a nod. “Have yourself a wonderful evening.”

“You as well,” Dale muttered as he walked away, staring down at the manila envelope in his hands. He thought maybe he should call Harry back; he knew exactly what was in the envelope from Philadelphia: HR would want to schedule a psych evaluation following his ordeal in the woods. But the envelope from Audrey was a total mystery, and as such it demanded his full attention. 

He glanced at the clock.  _ I have time before I need to go up to meet Laura, _ he thought. So he flipped the envelope over and unwrapped the string closure, reaching inside to pull out a stack of paper. At first he didn’t recognize what it was, and it took several seconds for it to sink in: it was a typed transcription. 

A smile started small at the corners of his lips before spreading across his face as he recalled their conversation the night before right before sleep claimed them both, about Diane and her role in his professional life. It wasn’t exactly a serious breach of confidentiality—he’d taken no confessions or witness statements recently—but while she didn’t have the clearance or qualifications to do what she’d done, he still couldn’t help but feel a wash of affection for Audrey and her thoughtfulness.  _ She’s transcribed my latest tapes…  _

Dale suddenly felt his blood run cold. With shaking hands, he began to flip through the dozen or so pages, reading line after line in detail now as his heart sank.  _ It’s all about this case! My case! Parallel dimensions, doubles… _

“Oh, Audrey…” he groaned.  _ This isn't how I wanted you to find out…  _ he said.

Dale passed his hand over the stack of paper. There was no note from her, nothing to indicate any kind of editorial concern on her part. But he had to believe that she was probably panicked, scared, and confused. And it was his fault entirely—for letting her in the room last night, for leaving his tapes out for her to peruse, for not telling her the truth in the first place. 

He was gutted. 

Stricken, he looked up to the concierge desk, hoping to ask Randy to help him locate Audrey, but he was assisting another customer with their check-in. She’d likely be at home now; he could go up and explain in person.  _ Maybe a phone call is better? Leave her a note, asking her to call you! Then she can meet you on her terms, when she’s ready,  _ _ if _ _ she’s ready… _

“Dale?”

He swung around and came face-to-face with Laura, who stood in front of him clutching a stack of books to her chest. 

“Are you okay?” she asked him.

Dale swallowed and nodded. “Laura, I—I’m sorry, I just—” he trailed off, looking around them at the gathering crowds of people filling in off the tour bus that he could see parked in front of the doors outside. Through the chaos of the lobby his mind was trying to focus, however hazily, on finding Audrey and explaining himself to her. It was impossible to do. He blinked several times and shook his head, trying to clear his vision.

“You’re white as a ghost,” she told him, her hand at his elbow. She was barely touching him, and yet he was malleable as putty as she led him across the lobby to a quiet and secluded corner far from the front desk and any prying ears. He didn’t know how she did it; he wasn’t even sure he wanted to be there. 

But this was Laura; her pull was magnetic, gravitationally-centered, and he felt himself falling into her orbit whether he wanted to or not. When she sat down in the leather club chair opposite him and set her books on the small table beside her, she looked up with such withdrawn sadness in her eyes that he forgot everything but the deep desire he had to fix everything for her, immediately. He set the papers down and took a seat, laser focused on her. 

She glanced at the papers and then back at him, hazarding a guess. “Bad news?"

“In a manner of speaking,” he replied, turning the stack of papers over, the tree sketches on top.

She sat up in her chair. “Do you want to talk about it?”

He shook his head. “You said _you_ needed to talk to _me._ ”

Laura swallowed and averted her gaze, rounding her shoulders, seeming to fold in on herself. “Right,” she spoke as she started to pick at her fingernail; her hands were trembling. “Well, it’s just…you’ve been a good friend to me…”

“I have?”

She looked at him, the right corner of her mouth turned up in a lopsided grin. “In a manner of speaking,” she parroted back at him before looking back at her hands. “I just feel…it was only a few weeks ago, and I was just coming out of the hospital, and after everything that had happened, with Ronette—”

As she spoke her friend’s name, her voice cracked, and pain shadowed her face. 

He leaned forward, closing the gap between them. “Are you okay?”

Laura seemed startled, and she smiled as brightly as she could manage, though it didn’t reach her eyes. “I’m fine,” she lied. “Really. I feel fine. The last few weeks have been hard, but knowing that you were there…I guess that’s made it so much easier.”

“I’m glad,” he heard himself saying, although he wasn’t entirely sure it was the right thing to say at all. She was talking about illicit rendezvous that had been happening for weeks, things he hadn’t experienced and couldn’t remember if he tried; he scolded himself internally even as he watched her countenance change, lighten, as his words had their desired effect.

“I know it wasn’t your idea to start this,” she admitted.. “And maybe it was wrong all along…but I don’t know…you’ve been such a comfort, and maybe I don’t feel like I deserve it…this kind of safety.”

Dale shook his head. “What do you mean, Laura?” he asked. “Of course you deserve to feel safe—”

She looked up at him then, and a pall fell over her and between them both, pitching their corner of the lobby in darkness. Her lips parted, a gruesome sneering smile that split her face in half, calling to mind once again her milk-eyed doppelgänger from the Red Room. Dale was momentarily shocked into silence.

“You don’t know me, Dale,” she rasped, teeth clenched. “You don’t know the  _ real  _ me.”

If this had been anyone else at all, Dale would have chalked it up to teenaged angst. But something about the way Laura spat the words convinced him that this was more than that. He tried to hide his surprise, and hoped it didn’t show on his face. Words failed him, and silence prevailed.

“The real you?” he asked finally, his voice a hair above a whisper. “What do you mean, Laura?”

Laura shook her head and looked away, trembling as she did so. “I’m buried so far down…so far down…covered up, covered so I can’t see the sun anymore.” 

Her voice sat low at the base of her throat, tremulous and deep. It wasn’t the voice of Laura from the tapes he’d remembered hearing, the ones she’d sent to Doctor Jacoby; it wasn’t even the voice of the same Laura he’d seen that afternoon at the diner, or the one who’d slipped into his room the morning before.  _ How is it possible that the same girl can be so different from hour to hour? _

Most alarmingly, it was apparent that Laura wasn’t speaking to him as much as she was simply speaking aloud, trance-like, reciting her thoughts for no one in particular; he just happened to be there to hear it. 

“It’s getting harder now,” she intoned. “Harder and harder, every day. My body is hardly mine anymore. My thoughts, my actions. My dreams. I’m sinking away, and I can’t stop it. I thought I could but I can’t. I feel like I’m going to drown here in front of everyone, and no one is going to ever know why…” She flicked her eyes up at him through the fringe of her lashes. The fingernail she’d been picking was now bloodied, raw, and inflamed.

Dale was horrified. He leaned forward, further closing the space between them. “Laura, what are you saying?”

Laura’s hand shot out to grab his, and with a preternaturally strong grip she squeezed his fingers. “ _He’s learning about you_ ,” she hissed. “He _knows you_ now. The way he _knows_ me _._ ”

Dale tried his best to stay composed, but fear and adrenaline coursed though his veins, and it took everything he had to remain seated across from her. She grimaced, her face a frightening display of teeth—that was all he could see, anyway, just two rows of gleaming teeth behind lips, pulled tight in a crude facsimile of a smile—that relaxed by the millimetre as the seconds passed.

“You are the only one who can help me, Dale Cooper," she whispered, frantic desperation lacing her tone. "I have no one else to turn to. No one else at all...”

As Dale felt his stomach drop, he searched for words, for the right question to ask. But before he had a chance to say anything, Sarah Palmer burst into view. Wheeling on the two of them, she stalked to the corner, fire blazing in her eyes.

“Laura!” she cried, reaching for her daughter. 

Laura spun around to face Sarah, “Mom!”

Sarah stared daggers at Dale. It was painfully obvious that she had been crying; her nicotine stained fingers of her free hand swiped at the tear tracks on her cheeks as she turned away from him and to her daughter. “Laura, honey, we have to go. Now.”

“Mom, what’s going on?”

Dale stood up. “Mrs. Palmer, I—”

“Not now, Mr. Cooper,” Sarah spat, her voice shaking as she reached into her purse for her cigarettes. Almost immediately, she thought better of it and threw the package back within the depths of her bag, reaching for Laura’s hand instead. “Come on, Laura.”

Laura turned back to Dale almost apologetically before picking up the books from the side table and allowing herself to be whisked away out of the lobby.

Mystified by the bizarre turn of events, Dale sank back into the chair.

“Agent Cooper?”

He looked up and saw Randy with his hand in the air at the front desk. He gained his feet, grabbed the stack of transcripts from off the coffee table, and made is way to the desk.

“Yes Randy?”

“I have Sheriff Truman on the line for you again—”

Dale nodded. “Can you transfer it to my room?”

Randy shook his head. “He says it’s urgent.”

His brows furrowed as Randy set the desk phone on the counter and passed the receiver over before hitting the flashing button and reconnecting the call. Dale pressed his ear to the phone. “Harry?”

“Coop, we gotta go to Spokane.”

Dale wasn’t sure how it was possible that he could continually be plunged into the same primal state of shock, but for the third time in twenty minutes he felt ice in his veins. “What happened?”

For a long moment all Dale could hear on the other end was Harry’s faint breathing. 

“Harry?”

“You know how you asked if Leland had ever attempted suicide?”

Dale shut his eyes, a heavy sigh falling from his lips. “I’ll be right there.”

He hung up the receiver and passed the entire thing back to Randy.

“Everything all right, Agent Cooper?”

Dale smiled and nodded his thanks to the concierge before bustling himself out of the lobby; the manila envelope in his arm, and the inevitable conversation he’d need to have about them, would have to wait for now.


	14. Chapter 14

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Coop and Truman meet the locals at the Spokane Valley Correctional Centre.

Most of the drive from Twin Peaks to the Spokane Valley Correctional Centre was spent in silence. Harry drove, siren blaring as he took the long, straight highway at a speed significantly over the limit. They made it there in just under ninety minutes.

As they arrived in the city limits, with the engine sounds dying away and their attention focused on making it through the early evening traffic snarls, Harry’s impatience and frustration seemed to bubble over. Screeching to a halt at a sudden red light, Harry slammed his open palm against the steering wheel.

“That bastard!”

Dale counted to three in his head before replying. “Harry, you should calm down before we get in there.”

The sheriff fumed. “He commits a heinous crime and thinks he can take the easy way out instead of facing up to it. How in the hell am I supposed to calm down about that?”

“In this line of work, the things we see—”

Harry narrowed his eyes. “Maybe  _ you  _ see it in  _ your  _ job, Agent Cooper, but ‘round these parts we don’t get a lot of homicides, so forgive me if I’m having a harder time processing this.”

Dale nodded. “You’re right, Harry. Easy to forget as an outsider,” he said. “But if I can just offer a kind of counterpoint to your justifiable anger, here…”

But Harry was having none of it. “You know, that’s another thing. You come in here, calm and cool and collected, with no connection to these people, to this place, and at the end of the day you get to go home again. What are the rest of us supposed to do, huh?”

Dale stared at his friend, unsure of whether the rant was warranted or not. He decided now would be the wrong time to pursue that line of questioning. “You sound like you don’t think much of me or my place here, and for whatever I did that gave you that impression, I’m truly sorry,” he started. “But I assure you I’m as invested in this as anyone." He paused, letting his words sink in while he searched for the next ones. "I care about Twin Peaks, about what happens here.”

Harry sighed and turned his eyes back to the road. “I know, Coop. I’m sorry,” he said. “You’re dealing with something pretty far outside the scope of anything either of us is like to be used to. I forgot that.”

“It’s all right,” Dale returned. The light went green, and Harry pressed the accelerator, easing into the intersection. They were a mere three blocks away now; a light rain had begun to fall, and Harry switched on the windshield wipers.

Dale considered whether or not he should say what was on the tip of his tongue, but as they rolled into the correctional facility parking lot, it tumbled out. “Leland is likely dealing with psychological disturbances you and I could never imagine dealing with,” he started. “Where I’m from, Leland was possessed. He didn’t necessarily do the things he was accused of doing. It might be prudent to take that into account.”

Harry kept the truck idling in 'Park' for several more seconds before keying off the ignition. “I know that’s a truth you believe, Coop, and I’m trying here, I really am. But I think the supernatural mumbo jumbo has me at my limit.” He sighed. “I’m here to report back to the ADA, as this might be a mitigating factor in bumping up Leland’s trial date. It’s not for me to pass judgment, so I’ll try not to.” Then he turned to Dale once more. “But don’t ask me to forget what I saw, what he did to her…”

Dale nodded, and Harry—placated for the moment—took a deep breath and stepped out from the vehicle.

They were met by the warden, who greeted them as they approached the front doors. “Sheriff Truman?”

Harry nodded and stuck his hand out for the warden to shake. “That’s me,” he said, gesturing to Agent Cooper two steps behind. “This is FBI Special Agent Dale Cooper.”

Surprised, the warden shook Dale’s hand. “Wasn’t expecting a J. Edgar. Isn’t this a little outside your jurisdiction?”

“The ‘F’ in FBI stands for Federal,” Dale replied coolly. “Everything is our jurisdiction. But as the crimes committed by Mr. Palmer fit the pattern of a serial killer we’ve been tracking for some time now, this is absolutely within our purview.” He narrowed his eyes at the warden. “Is that going to be a problem?”

The warden shook his head. “No problem at all,” he said, stepping aside and granting them access to the overly-bright entryway.

A lone woman staffed the front desk. She was young, glossy black hair secured in a high ponytail at the crown of her head. She was loudly chewing bubble gum and reading the _TV Guide_ as she sat there, ignoring the elderly couple at the counter who were attempting and failing to communicate their needs both with her and each other; Dale figured they were speaking Hungarian. The warden fumbled with his keys to get the door open, and Dale watched as the couple shuffled through paperwork from within a worn leather valise that the man had tossed up on the counter. Small laminated cards and legal envelopes seemed to slide everywhere as he rummaged, while the old woman at his side made a futile effort at pushing all the papers back into the bag.

All the while, the young woman behind the desk was blowing a massive bubble. Pink and gooey, it expanded and expanded until Dale figured it was the size of a large halogen lightbulb, and then further, to the size of a party balloon. Entranced, he continued to watch, even as the sound of Hungarian frustration died away and until the moment the bubble popped, the pink mess deflating and drooping, sticking to her chin in a limp sheet. She looked up from her magazine and pressed a button that opened a second door on the opposite side of the desk from where Dale and Harry stood, transfixed, in utter silence. 

The warden sighed and the sound of the lock tumbler sliding into place and the creak of the heavy door swinging open brought them back to reality. They passed into the hallway beyond, and the warden locked the door behind him.

"She's new," he said, jerking his head back toward the desk. "My sister's friend's daughter's roommate. Real airhead."

 _Not everyone can have a Lucy_ , Dale thought.

They made their way down the long hallway, which ran adjacent to the first three wings of cell blocks extending perpendicularly off in both directions, on the right and the left. It didn’t matter where he was, whether it was a state or a federal jail, no matter which city or state: every single jail Dale had ever set foot in was comprised of the same curious mix of clinical sterility and drab dirtiness. This one was no different: hospital green and cream ceramic tiles on the walls met grey concrete floors, all washed out beneath unforgiving fluorescent lights that strobed in places and were burned out in others but still cast their harsh greenish light outward to flood every hallway. Chemical cleansers burned through the air, mixing with the scent of cafeteria food and that peculiar staleness that comes from only the narrowest of access to outside fresh air. As they passed through the bleak hallways, past abutting cell blocks, there was not one consistent temperature, and Dale alternated between needing his suit jacket and wanting to drop it where he stood.

It was an ugly place, for ugly parts of society. Dale knew that, and yet he was shocked to think that this was where the next chapter of Leland Palmer’s story was being written. 

“It’s a bit of a hike,” the warden said, his voice the only sound aside from the solid  _ thud-thud-thud _ of each of their footfalls echoing down the corridor. “Infirmary’s been retrofitted, shoehorned in just like everything else in this place. Holding the damn place together with baling wire, and only just at that.”

“Can you tell us what happened this afternoon?” Harry asked.

The warden scratched the back of his neck as he continued on down the hallway. “Not much to tell. One of the guards found him in the middle of it. Managed to stop him but he’d lost a lot of blood already. Got him stabilized in his cell and then moved him here. He’s been sedated ever since.”

“Was he exhibiting any strange behaviour in the hours leading up to the attempt?” Dale asked.

The warden considered for a moment before sharking his head. “He was fine during morning rounds. No problem at chow time either,” he replied. “Kept to himself during recreation but then he’s always done that. Nothing out of the ordinary to suggest that he was planning something like this, if that’s what you mean.”

They had reached the end of the hallway and were buzzed through a set of heavy-duty doors, suddenly confronted by a lobby that resembled a hospital ward in every way save for the prison bars that separated them from the main corridor. Between the bars, Dale could count six beds, sectioned off by privacy curtains, lining the walls; only one had its curtains drawn. 

His stomach quivered. He dug his fingernails into his palms to quell his nerves.

“You okay Coop?”

“Fine, Harry," came his tight reply.

The warden and the woman manning the desk exchanged pleasantries for a moment as she buzzed them through the second set of doors, past uniformed guards, and into the infirmary, where they were met by a short, stout woman with an armful of clipboards and a stethoscope around her neck.

“You must be from Twin Peaks,” she smiled, revealing a line of braces across her teeth. “Here to check on our sole patient.”

Harry and Dale exchanged glances, suddenly unsure about who should take the lead. It was Harry who eventually cleared his throat and began to talk. “How is he?” 

“He’ll recover,” she replied. “He’ll be under twenty-four-hour-a-day suicide watch for a while once he’s released from the infirmary.”

“We’re really here in order to convince the DA to fast track this trial,” he continued. “The backlog of cases is making it difficult for them to set a date, but now that he’s made an attempt on his own life—”

“I’ll be happy to contribute to your report,” she said. “Whatever you need.”

“Why wasn’t Mr. Palmer moved to a nearby hospital to receive treatment?” Harry continued. “Isn’t that standard procedure?”

The warden’s derisive scoff drew Dale’s attention. “No one wants a felon taking up a hospital bed next to the general population, Sheriff.”

“He’s been remanded into custody of the state and denied bail. He hasn’t had his trial yet,” Dale interjected. “He’s not a felon until he’s been convicted.”

Dale’s pronouncement drew a glance from Harry that warned him he was dangerously close to overstepping, as well as a second huff from the warden, who crossed his arms in front of him and disengaged from the conversation.

The doctor took over. “Well, this may not be the fanciest place to recuperate, but we’re fully equipped to handle medical emergencies such as this,” she said. “Once he was stable, we gave him a blood transfusion, and at that point he was resting comfortably and we felt there was no need to move him unless his condition worsened.”

Dale nodded. “What did he use to do it?”

The doctor sighed. “A shard of glass from a compact makeup mirror,” she replied. “No idea how he managed to get something like that in here.”

Both Harry and Dale turned to the warden, as if ready to question him on the fact, but a well-timed call over his radio drew his attention away, and he excused himself to deal with something at the front desk.

The doctor attempted to smooth things over. “He’s good at his job, but he’s prickly,” she said.

Harry sighed. “I suppose we’d like to see him, if that’s possible.”

She nodded. “I’m told his family is on their way. I have concerns about allowing people to see a loved one in such a state, especially since I’m told he has a daughter?”

“Yes,” Dale said. “Seventeen years old.”

The doctor grimaced. “He’s been in and out of wakefulness all afternoon,” she said as she made her way to the closed curtains. “I can’t promise he’ll be lucid.”

“We’ll take what we can get,” Harry said. 

“All right,” she told them. “I have charts to finish up—I’ll be over there if you need anything.”

She turned and walked away, leaving Dale and Harry alone.

“I have nothing to say to him,” Harry half-whispered. “I’m only here to see if he’s bad enough to warrant a sped-up trial. And even then, it’s only so that this town can get some closure.” He jabbed a finger, presumably, in Leland’s direction. “I have no goodwill towards that man.”

Dale nodded. “Let me take the lead, Harry,” he said. “I have questions that I’m beginning to think he’s never been asked before.”

Harry nodded, unconvinced. “As long as you get him to say his incarceration is the reason he did this, then we can get out of here.”

He stepped aside, and Dale steeled himself, taking a deep breath and heaving a sigh as he lifted his hand and pulled the curtain open.


	15. Chapter 15

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A talk with Leland proves illuminating...and disturbing.

The first thing that struck Dale when he walked into the curtained-off hospital room was the gauntness in Leland’s cheeks, the paleness that sat there within skin entirely devoid of the natural blush of life. But more than that, he was shocked to discover that Leland Palmer’s hair was its natural chestnut brown; it was limp and lifeless as he lay there in the bed, but there was not one strand of silvery-white hair to be found. 

He was connected to a saline drip and heart monitor. Both of his wrists were bandaged with thick white gauze, the barest reminder of the violence he’d done to himself only hours before. His eyes were closed, but his lashes fluttered as Dale took up a seat at Leland’s side. Harry stood at the end of the bed, one foot out the door.

“Leland?”

The man’s eyes struggled to open, but when they did, recognition dawned. “Agent Cooper,” he whispered. “Long time no see.”

“Leland, do you know where you are?”

He nodded.

“Do you know what’s happened to you?”

Again, he nodded; tears brimmed against his lower lashes. “Yes, I know.”

Dale took a look back at Harry and then towards Leland, weighing his options. They had their goal, stated in the plainest language before they’d stepped into the room; but Dale had his own goal, and that was far more nebulous.

_ I need to get him talking _ …

“Leland, why did you hurt yourself?”

At this, Leland began to weep. Weakly, he replied. “I don’t know. I just…I didn’t do the things you think I did. No one believes me.”

“These are questions for a court to decide,” Dale pressed ahead, hoping the shift towards the legal side of things might trigger the lawyer in Leland to take a stand. “When you have your day in court, you’ll be able to fight for your freedom, the same way every other citizen is able to do. Why would you give up that right? Why end your life before having the chance to fight for your innocence?”

“It’s not that simple, Agent Cooper,” Leland said. “You and I both know that it will take months for me to see the inside of a courtroom, and all the while every single person in town will have made up their mind about my guilt…”

Harry shuffled his feet, and Dale glanced his way; the statement coaxed out of Leland was probably enough, and the look on Harry’s face confirmed that. Their objective completed, Dale felt time slipping away.

It was a stab in the dark, but one that he had to make.

“Who is BOB?”

“Coop—” Harry warned.

Leland’s face contorted and he shook his head. “What? Bob?”

Dale leaned forward. “Do you know a man named BOB?” he asked. “Or Robertson? A man whose cabin was nearby your grandfather’s on Pearl Lakes?”

Leland stared at the FBI Agent. “I don’t know anyone named Bob…”

Dale furrowed his brow.  _ How can he not know? _

“Agent Cooper…”

“Harry,” Dale said as he stood up and rounded the end of the bed, taking Harry by the shoulder and lowering his voice. “If he can tell us where BOB is, maybe we can know when he might strike again, and that might help me find my way back…”

“This is long shot and you know it,” Harry said. “I’ve been with you every step of the way, you know I have, but this is  _ this close  _ to taking it too far.”

“I have to try,” Dale replied.

The sheriff said nothing, but his silence was as close he was going to get to agreement, and Dale turned back to Leland before Harry could change his mind.

“You don’t remember a man who made you do things? When you were a little boy?” he asked. “Who might have flicked matches at you?”

Leland’s eyes widened, slowly, at the mention of matches. “How could you know about that? Did I tell you that?”

Heartened, Dale pressed on. “Leland, if you didn’t do the things you’re accused of doing, who did it?”

Leland groaned. “I-I don’t know…”

“What happened in the train car, Leland?”

Leland’s confusion was palpable. He shook his head. “I told you all of this already,” he said, though he could tell that Dale wasn’t keen on that response. He continued, his voice trembling. “I woke up from a trance. I was already in the train car…but I had no idea how I’d gotten there, where I was. I was…dizzy. I climbed down from the car. Ronette…” he choked on a sob. “She was already dead. I thought she’d fallen from the car, or maybe been attacked by a bear. There was so much blood…and I had no blood on me. But I panicked…I-I walked back to my office, cleaned up, changed clothes, and went to work as if nothing had happened.”

“That’s the surest sign of a guilty conscience, Leland,” Harry said, his first words to him since they’d arrived.

“I-I know it looks bad,” Leland said. “But like I told you, I was scared. I wasn’t thinking. I couldn’t remember anything. I still can’t. It was like the last day was erased from my memory. I lost a full day." At this, he opened his eyes fully and searched Dale's face. "How does that happen? Is there something wrong with my brain?”

Dale listened, intently, as the story continued. “What happened next?”

Leland shut his eyes; tears squeezed out from between his lashed and fell down his cheeks. “I got a call, mid-morning, that my Laura was in the hospital, that Ronette’s body had been found, and—I’m sorry, Agent Cooper, you know all of this. What does this have to do with anything?”

Dale leaned against the end of the hospital bed, palms gripping the footboard, while Laura’s words from earlier that afternoon echoed in his head.

Harry stepped an inch closer, his hand at Dale’s elbow.

“Coop—”

But Dale didn’t hear him. He looked up at the man in the bed. “Were you sexually abusing your daughter, Leland?”

Harry’s hand tightened at Dale’s elbow, and Leland’s face registered his own horror.

“No!” he cried. “I would never…how could—I never did…” his voice trailed off as he broke down in tears. “I want to see my family…I need to see my family…”

“That’s enough, Cooper,” Harry said, pulling Dale by the elbow and leading him back out into the ward, where the doctor—who’d heard much of what was being said—was standing awkwardly at her desk.

“His wife and daughter are here,” she said, but as the words left her mouth, the sound of Sarah screaming at the hospital desk clerk beyond the bars broke through the relative silence of the infirmary. Dale and Harry glanced at the desk, and saw mother and daughter, waiting to be let in beneath the flickering lights of the anteroom, the warden at their side. Laura’s passivity in the face of her mother’s open outrage was jarring, but only in contrast to the banshee who had replaced the tragic Sarah Palmer that Dale remembered.  _ This  _ woman was wild and angry, and he feared her, more than he feared anyone else he had encountered in this world.

They were buzzed in, and Sarah charged ahead. “Haven’t you done  _ enough  _ to this family?” she cried at them both before flinging open the curtains and throwing herself at her husband’s side.

Harry ushered Dale out to the desk, but not before Dale and Laura exchanged a charged gaze. She took up a post just outside the curtain of her father’s bed, while her parents reunited within. As Dale left the infirmary and the gates buzzed closed behind him, he was acutely aware of Laura’s eyes on his back the whole time.

“I think we’ve got enough to go to the DA,” Harry said, gesturing to the phone on the desk. The warden and the desk clerk both nodded and Harry picked up the receiver, punching in the number. Dale shoved his hands into his pockets. It was unnerving, listening to Leland recount a different set of events without any recollection of the motivating force that  _ had  _ to have caused them.

_ He doesn’t remember _ , Dale thought to himself.  _ Is it possible that when BOB left Leland he left him intact? With his memories exactly as they were, the evil that he’d done clouded from his conscious mind? _

Dale had no good answer. Everything about the Lodges was a mystery—even to him, and he’d spent a quarter century locked inside. Of course it was possible that BOB could have left Leland alone instead of forcing him to kill himself; clearly, there was no BOB living inside him now, or else Leland wouldn’t still be alive.

_ But why? Why would BOB leave Leland alive and unharmed? _

Dale focused his attention on the bars separating the small anteroom from the infirmary, and noticed without trying to that Laura was still staring at him. As she continued her intense, ocular assault, Dale felt himself retreating;  _ Like mother like daughter _ , he thought, as his fear mounted and he struggled to avoid Laura’s piercing gaze.  _ She can’t blame me for what’s happened to her father, can she? _

Harry’s voice brought him back from his reverie. “He’s considering it,” Harry said. “He wants a full report. Statements from everyone, testimony about Leland’s mental state. I’m gonna need to talk to that doctor again. But I think we can make this happen.”

“Good,” Dale muttered, stifling a yawn with the back of his hand. “Gosh, Harry, I’m so sorry ** _—_** ”

“We should hit the road,” Harry said, abruptly cutting Dale off. “We’ve got a lot of work to do.”

Dale chanced a glance at Laura, who was still looking at him, though without the same murderous malice in her eyes.  _ She looked betrayed _ , he thought, and the word conjured up the image of Audrey, and the evidence of his deception, which lay bound in a manila envelope on the passenger seat of the sheriff’s truck.

_ I need to find Audrey… _ he thought.  _ As soon as I get back. _

“Yeah,” he agreed. “The faster we leave, the faster we get home.”

“We can gas up on our way north,” Harry said as they were buzzed out into the long hallway beyond the doors once again. As Harry started the trek back down to the front lobby, still talking, Dale fought the desire to turn around and see if Laura was still watching him.

He felt her eyes on his back the entire way down.


	16. Chapter 16

The drive back to Twin Peaks was as quiet and sombre as the drive to Spokane had been, but with the added layer of tension between the two men owing from the confrontation in the infirmary. Dale shuffled and reshuffled the contents of the manila envelope, without reading them; he was sick enough about what he’d heard without having to think about the issues Audrey was presenting.

As they passed along the eastern edge of Colville National Forest in the encroaching darkness, more than an hour into their drive and with almost an hour left to go, Harry finally pulled the truck off onto the shoulder of the highway.

“Call of nature,” he muttered as he maneuvered the gear shift into ‘Park’ and lumbered out of the truck. Dale watched as he disappeared into the murky dusk down in the ditch beside the road.  

Dale had to pee too, but something told him Harry wasn’t just relieving himself; he needed some space, and no matter how far away Dale stood from the sheriff, he knew it wouldn't be far enough.

When Harry re-emerged from the darkness and climbed back into the truck, Dale was the first to speak. “Harry, I—”

“Coop, it’s okay,” he said. “You have your methods, and though they might be strange to me they worked. We got what we came for. That’s all I can ask.”

It wasn’t what Dale was expecting to hear, and though he didn’t quite have the same relationship to  _ this  _ Harry, he was still relieved to hear that he was forgiven. “Thank you, Harry. I didn’t mean to overstep,” he replied. “I let myself get carried away, and for that I’m sorry.”

“No,” Harry said. “I’m glad you were here, because seeing Leland made me realize my emotions are all over the place from this case still, and I wouldn’t have been able to talk to him the way you did.” He sighed, pressing the key into the ignition but stopping just short of turning it; his hand fell back into his lap. “You’re a good law man, Coop. The finest. If you have an intuition about something, you’ve got to run with it. And my job has to be to support you so you can get back to wherever it is you belong.”

“I appreciate that, Harry. I really do.”

Harry nodded. “So, did _you_ hear what you needed to hear from him?”

Dale sighed and shook his head. “It’s strange. Nothing squares up the way it should. When you told me that he had made an attempt on his own life, I thought it could be explained as BOB’s presence. And if I could find BOB, maybe I could…” he sighed, again. “I don’t even know, to be honest. I’m grasping at straws, Harry.”

“It’s only been a couple of days,” he said. “Not all the answers are going to come at once.”

“I know,” Dale replied. “It’s a frustrating place to be in though. I’m close. Things are there—I can feel them, just barely see them—but they’re still so far out of reach.”

Harry scratched his thumb beneath his right eye. “What can you do to get there?”

“Sleep,” Dale replied automatically, a smile on his face. “Haven’t gotten as much of that as I’d like.” He stopped and considered what he’d said, and realized it wasn’t quite true. Clearing his throat, he added. “Or maybe it’s just not the right kind of sleep.” 

“There’s a wrong kind?”

“For me, yes,” Dale said, glancing at the sheriff from the corner of his eye. “I know it’s not the right kind if I’m not dreaming…”

“And you’re not dreaming?”

“If I am, I don’t remember them,” Dale said. “At first I think it was a relief, but now I would love to have some insight. The sleeping mind can provide such insight during the cataloguing of events of the day. If I’m missing something during my waking hours, when I sleep I can put it together. But if I don’t dream, how will I know?”

It wasn’t a question that Dale was expecting an answer to, and Harry didn’t provide one, so silence once again filled the cab of the truck.

Finally, Harry asked the question. “What’s in the folder?”

Dale glanced down at the package in his lap. “Sketches of tree rings.”

Harry looked at Dale. "Tree rings?" he asked, his lips upturned at the corners.

"It sounds insane, Harry, I know," Dale replied as he reached into the envelope, searching through the pages inside to find the sketches, which he pulled out and set on top. He traced the edge of his finger around the rings of the giant sequoia as he’d drawn it. 

"Can I see 'em?" Harry asked.

Dale handed the entire stack over, and Harry began flipping through page after page in his perusal.

"It was something the Major said, about life being inside trees,” Dale said, looking down at his hands. “I’m not sure what that means, but I just _feel_ the answer is in there.”

Silence stretched between them as Harry continued to examine the pages. Finally, he spoke up. “How does Diane get these back to you so quickly?”

Dale looked over, and saw that Harry was reading the transcripts now. He froze. “Those weren’t from Diane,” he said, a pit forming in his stomach.

Harry lifted his head. “Then who—?”

Dale reached for the papers and, upon retrieval, started to shove them back into the envelope. “Audrey did these,” he answered softly. “She came to see me last night, and—"

Harry smiled; even without looking, Dale could hear it. “You dog…”

“It’s not what you think,” Dale corrected without the attendant embarrassment that had been second-nature when it came to any discussion he’d had with Harry on this topic up until this point. “She was alone all day yesterday after being brought home. She came to see me and we talked, and at some point we both fell asleep…”

“Did you give her the tapes?”

“I left them out," Dale replied. "She must have picked them up and transcribed them, thinking she was doing me a favour.”

After a pause, Harry leaned back in his seat. “You don’t sound too happy about it.”

Dale shook his head. “That’s because of all the ways I envisioned Audrey finding out about what’s happening to me, this is the last one I would have wanted.”

Harry blew out a sigh. “Hoo boy,” he intoned. “That’s a tough one.”

“Yeah,” Dale nodded. “She couldn’t have known what was in the tapes until she listened to them. Knowing Audrey she barrelled on ahead, not wanting to leave the job half finished. I don’t know what she thinks or how she feels about it…”

“You didn’t talk to her when she gave them to you?”

“No,” Dale replied. “She left them at reception at the hotel. I was about to find her when Laura showed up, and then you called about Leland, and—”

“You saw Laura again today?”

Dale nodded. “Twice in fact. Once at the Double R, and again at the Great Northern, right before you called. She insisted we meet, and she was…well, Harry, she was beside herself, acting erratically, saying things…” He sighed and shut his eyes, trying to find the words to describe Laura’s state of mind, but instead of finding words, his mind flashed to an image, clear as day: two hands reaching for him from opposite directions.

“Coop?”

“Just a minute Harry,” Dale said as he furrowed his brow and focused hard on the image before it faded. But it was gone, ghosted away like the morning mist. He opened his eyes and sighed. “Never mind. Gone.”

“What was it?”

Dale took a deep breath. “A dream, Harry. Maybe. Or a portion of one, at least.” He leaned against the seat. What colour there once was, chasing the sun over the western horizon, had been replaced by the darkness had bled across the sky in the time the two men had been sitting there. “It’s getting late,” Dale said softly. “We should head back.”

Harry nodded and keyed the ignition, throwing the truck in ‘Drive’ and pulling out from the shoulder of the highway. Dale forgot that the call of nature had been beckoning to him until they had reached their cruising speed, when it would have been absurd to ask Harry to stop.  _ All the better _ , he thought as he focused his mind on the task of holding his urine. It would give him something else to do for the last hour of their trip instead of worrying…

They pulled up to the hotel just after ten, and said their goodbyes before Dale made his way through the lobby and up the stairs to the third floor, eschewing the elevator in order to rejuvenate his legs. As he reached his door, he paused, wondering what he’d find. In his mind, twenty five years had passed since he’d come home from a day much like this one to find Audrey in his room, in his bed. But in  _ this  _ reality, it wasn’t all that long ago; and with less than twenty-four hours having passed between now and the last time she knocked on his door, he half-expected to see her still there, sitting at the desk…

He almost  _ wanted  _ to see her there. And  _ that  _ surprised him most of all.

Alas, when he swung the heavy door open he was met with a room so empty it felt cavernous.

She’d left the place in impeccable condition—the bed was made, his things meticulously arranged on the desk. In the bathroom, fresh towels hung from the rungs; as he climbed into the shower and scrubbed the day from his body, he wondered if she had showered there before she left, and allowed a blush to creep over him as he imagined it, briefly, before twisting the knob from Hot to Cold to help banish the thoughts entirely.

His nightly routine ended when he climbed into bed. A long strand of Audrey’s hair clung delicately to the pillow she’d used. It lay on “her” side of the bed, designated so in case she were to return and need a place to lay her head, as if out of some kind of domestic deference he didn’t quite understand.

_ You’re just tired, Dale _ , he told himself. But he knew that wasn’t it. That it was something more than just that.

All the same, as his eyes closed and his waking mind gave in to sleep, he found himself conjuring images of Audrey, decorated by the scent of her perfume and the soft lilt of her voice. In his dreams that night, she reached for him, her pretty hand adorned by rings she so desperately wanted him to look at...


	17. Chapter 17

Dale was awakened by the sound of his room telephone ringing loudly from the desk across the room. Startled and groggy, he launched himself out of bed and staggered to the phone to answer it. 

“Yes, Agent Cooper here,” he said, his voice thick with sleep.

“Did I wake you?” Albert’s deep baritone rang through from the other end. “It’s six o’clock. Usually you’ve had a run, a yoga session, and six cups of coffee by now.”

Dale’s eyes widened at the sound of his voice. “Albert?” he asked.

“How you doin’, Coop?” his friend asked. “Haven’t heard from you since you followed Earle on his little nature hike.”

“I’m sorry, I—”

“I know, I know. Too busy to call. Too busy to write,” Albert sighed. “Brass is worried about you, and frankly so am I. It’s taken everything to keep Gordon from flying down there himself but I told him you’ve got this handled. I think I've bought you an extra couple of days, but Dale, I'm telling you, he's not gonna be kept away forever, and the longer you go without filing a report on this...” Albert paused.

"I know."

“And I don't want him traipsing into the Great Northern to see you canoodling with the Horne girl, or the Palmer girl, or _both—_ somehow. I'm not judging, I'm just saying—"

Dale felt his throat close up. "Albert, I—"

"—So consider this a courtesy, one borne out of the friendship you and I have for one another. Fill me in on the last, oh, three days of so, or else I'm going to have to fly out there instead, because trust me, as much as I love the cold damp Pacific Northwest at this time of year, I'd rather be here in Philadelphia..."

Dale ground the heel of his hand against his eyes. The thought of explaining to Albert— _ this  _ Albert, not the Albert he remembered—the circumstances surrounding his current, off-the-books investigation was nearly too much to contemplate. “Everything’s fine.”

“You sure?”

“Well, it’s been a rough couple of days, but—” he took a breath and felt an out materialize. “It was a singularly weird experience, Albert, and I’m still trying to process it all. But I’ve made headway, and I’ll be sending the tapes to Diane soon. I’ll have her cc you on the transcripts.”

Dale hoped that Albert would be placated, and at first Albert said nothing, but eventually Dale heard him sigh.

“All right,” Albert said. “And you’re off the clock now. Standard operating procedure. I’m sure by now you’ve heard from Human Resources…”

Dale nodded. “Yeah,” he said, quoting from the letter he’d received the day before. “ _Psychological evaluation required before assignment to any new cases._ ”

“I'd say you needed it long before this but...,” Albert trailed off, adding. "That was a joke, Agent Cooper."

Dale was still rattled from Albert's earlier comments. "Right," he muttered.

“Now I know you and the Sheriff Andy Taylor have a cozy little friendship up there in Mayberry, but I don’t need to hear that he’s deputized you again in order for you to go and help him solve some pressing cat-in-a-tree case or anything, y’hear?”

“Yes, Albert.”

“I mean it,” he continued. “You’ve been given time to come to grips with what happened. Use it.”

And with the barest of goodbyes, Albert hung up the phone. The brusque manner with which he dismissed the phone call was a shock to Dale, but only slightly. Albert was apparently still very much Albert-like, even in this universe, and there was some comfort to be had in that fact.

Pushing the thoughts to the side, he rubbed sleep from his eyes and replaced the receiver on the cradle. Audrey’s typed notes sat neatly stacked in the middle of the desk, where he’d left them the night before. He opened the file and sat down, finally taking the time to go through each page. It took a while to get past the fact that he was reading words that Audrey had first had to listen to, but once he did, his mind began to stir. He pulled out his sketches of the trees and tree rings from the day before.

_ This should wait until after you’ve had coffee,  _ he thought to himself as he picked up his recorder from the desk and pressed ‘Record’.

“Diane, it’s ten minutes past six in the morning. I was roused by a call from Albert. Just checking in, he says, since I have been…lax in my correspondence with Philadelphia.” He flipped through the pages and cleared his throat. “I was in Spokane last night with Leland Palmer. He made an attempt on his life while in federal custody, where he is awaiting trial for the murder of Ronette Pulaski. Several things have been troubling me since meeting with Major Briggs, but none more so than the fact that I do not know where BOB is, because after speaking with Leland, I am convinced that is not where we'll find him.” 

He pulled the tape recorder away from his mouth and considered the sketches once again, running his fingertips over the tree rings he’d drawn. “Diane, there are salient points between these two worlds that appear to be fixed—my arrival in Twin Peaks in both timelines occurred on the twenty-fourth of February, for example, and the Miss Twin Peaks pageant in both places occurred on the night of March twenty-seventh. The date of my suspension from the FBI is also consistent, as is the date of Major Briggs’s disappearance and the discovery of Leland Palmer’s culpability in the murders that occurred in both timelines. Perhaps these events are of cosmic import and are thus impossible to shift…and I realize that I am now speaking rather esoterically, but in the absence of scientific, rational explanations, the mind clamours to make sense of the world around it and this is how I’ve done it with mine.”

He cleared his throat. “Between these fixed points are the details of how everyone got from A to B to C and so on. It is not as if these changes are the result of what chaos theorists call the Butterfly Effect—by this I mean that slight changes in this timeline do not seem to correspond to dramatic changes as the point diverges from what I remember from my timeline. I don’t possess the perfect metaphor to describe my way of thinking, but I am recalling the image of tree rings…”

Dale passed his hand over the page on which he’d drawn the cross section of the giant sequoia and took a breath, considering how he might describe this better. “The dark lines on the cross-section of a tree trunk are, in this metaphor, the fixed points in time, while the lighter areas in between represent the details between one point in time and the next," he said, tapping his finger against the tree lines in his sketch. “If you were to put a ruler down at the centre of the tree trunk and draw a straight line from it to the outer bark, this could represent one timeline. That line would pass through a series of _fixed_ points—the dark lines—and _mutable_ points—the light, in-between areas.”

“However,” he continued, “It does not need to be the  _ only  _ timeline. Like spokes in a wheel, multiple timelines could exist next to one another around the the flat plane, each beginning from some central point and shooting off towards divergent points around the circumference of the tree. Each line would pass through dark  _ fixed  _ lines and lighter more malleable points on its way to the edge of the tree, but it would differ from the journey taken by another line next to it, just as the distance between the dark lines and shape of the concentric circles change in a tree trunk's cross-section."

He groaned, wondering if any of this would make sense, or if he’d only further confused the issue. “These lighter spaces between the dark lines are where the changes seem to be occurring, Diane. For instance, I entered Twin Peaks on February twenty-fourth in both timelines, and as I said earlier, in both timelines the same things happened on the same dates. But the things that led up to each of those things has changed—in my timeline, Major Briggs and I made plans to go night fishing on the afternoon of Leland Palmer’s funeral, while in this timeline Leland never died, but the Major and I still went camping. This led to Major Briggs’s disappearance in the woods. If you follow my example, you’ll see that my different selves have each experienced the same life-changing events, with minor alteration in the details of how I got from one to the next.”

He took a breath and furrowed his brow. “This doesn’t explain everything, of course. There are personality changes in the people here that I can’t reconcile. But I think the key to all of this lies in finding and documenting not the  _ differences _ but the  _ similarities _ . If I can find an event that took place on the same day, with the same people involved, and if those people are the same, from the standpoint of their personality…” Dale trailed off as he allowed himself a small laugh. “Well, that should be easy, Diane, since the only person I know in this timeline who doesn’t seem to have changed a bit is Audrey Horne, and—”

_ But how could Audrey be related to any of this?  _ he thought.  _ She had nothing to do with anything… _

_ Except that she was the one taken to the Lodge in this timeline… _

It occurred to him suddenly that he still hadn’t spoken to her, still hadn’t straightened things out. And if—against all odds and sense and logic—she was going to be instrumental in getting him home, he was going to have to do that sooner rather than later.

The thought sat poorly with him, that he may be forced to use Audrey to reach his ultimate goal. This was getting messier and messier by the minute. 

He clicked off his recorder and glanced at his watch. It wasn’t even 6:30am yet. Impatience gathered like a storm cloud across Dale’s face as he set the recorder down and set about getting himself ready. He’d shower; he’d have breakfast; and when all was said and done, if he didn’t cross paths with Audrey in the lobby or the restaurant, he’d phone her directly.

It seemed a simple enough plan, and somewhat placated, he set about completing it.

* * *

Passing through the lobby on his way back up to his room nearly two hours later, Dale was disappointed again to find no trace of Audrey. Gone—maybe forever—were the days when she’d sidle up to him in the dining room and help herself to a seat at his table, flirting with the kind of open innocence that she possessed in spades. He wondered if  _ that _ was a change between the Audrey he knew and the Audrey who existed here. Maybe his theories were incorrect; maybe Audrey had nothing to do with his return home after all.

Dejected, Dale slid his hand into his pocket.  _ Get a grip _ , he warned himself.  _ Perhaps she’s decided to stay home today, or maybe she went straight to school or work like she ought to _ .

_ Or maybe she simply doesn’t want to see you. _

Shaking his head, Dale made a beeline for the reception desk. Louie stood there, sorting paperwork, when he approached.

“Good morning Agent Cooper,” she exclaimed, glancing at her watch. “Oh! A little later than usual? You know what they say: The early bird gets the worm.”

Dale nodded but ultimately brushed her off; he had no time for casual pleasantries. “You haven’t seen Miss Horne today yet have you?”

Louie furrowed her brow. “You know, when Randy went home at the end of his shift last night he was wondering the exact same thing. It seems no one has seen her since yesterday.”

Dale shook his head, pushing aside the intrusive thoughts that surfaced, reminding him of the time in his distant past—which was really only a few weeks earlier—when Audrey disappeared the first time, only to turn up drugged at One Eyed Jack’s. A cold chill ran through his veins. “Are her parents looking for her?”

Louie didn’t seem to know how to answer; Ben Horne was, after all, her boss. And yet the look on her face told the story he was sure was being whispered around the staff break room, of a man who spent years cultivating wealth and power while simultaneously ignoring his family.

“I’m sure she’s around,” Louie offered with a smile that started out forced but became genuine in the end. “You know Audrey—she’s always been one to slip in and out unnoticed by the rest of us.”

“Right…” Dale muttered, unconvinced by Louie’s entirely characteristic show of optimism. “Well… thank you, Louie. If you do see her—”

He stopped.  _ You have no right to ask after her,  _ he reminded himself. All the same, Louie pressed her index finger to the side of her nose and smiled at Dale.

He walked back up to his room alone, wondering what was next. He tried not to worry, but it was the only thing his busy mind could manage, and he suddenly found himself wishing that Albert _was_ coming to Twin Peaks after all, if only for the reprieve that their awkward conversation would provide. Dale briefly considered going into the Sheriff’s Department, but he felt he’d be less than useful there, without anything to do and so many hours to fill. With nothing to occupy himself and the clock on the nightstand reading 8:45am, he deposited himself at the desk once again and began thumbing through the pages.  _ Perhaps there’s more here… _

Dale didn’t immediately notice the flashing light on his room telephone, but when he did, his attention was entirely diverted. There were four small buttons on the base of the telephone, a standard hotel phone that he’d seen dozens of times; one-touch connection to the concierge desk, in-room dining, housekeeping, and one for messages. This was the light that blinked at him.

He furrowed his brow and picked up the handset. He was certain he hadn’t seen the light blinking the entire time he was on the phone with Albert; had it been blinking when he came in the night before? For how long?

Was it from Audrey?

Pressing his index finger into the button produced a short, clipped ringing tone before an automated voice sounded.

“You have a new message,” the voice said, and Dale pressed the phone to his ear.

At first he heard nothing but static, and for several seconds he wondered if this was some kind of glitch, a wrong number somehow, or a prank call. Just as he was about to hang up, however, a new sound emerged, hollow and drafty, like wind blowing past his ear. When he heard the owl hoot, and a woman scream, he shivered and pressed the phone even more tightly to the cup of his ear. A female voice he didn’t recognize began to speak:

“Dale Cooper…naughty Dale Cooper. I know what you’ve been up to. I know that you’ve been a bad, very bad boy…” she said, her voice garbled and low, menacingly low.

Dale’s mouth went dry as he listened.

“I’m hurt, Dale. You hurt me. All I wanted was to know you, and boy oh boy did I get close…” the woman laughed, and then she began to cry. “I didn’t want to have to do this, but you left me no choice. No choice at all. You didn’t listen. And now I’m—”

As she finished her words, the desperation in her voice began to ring bells in Dale’s memory. He shook his head.  _ Is it Laura? _

In the background another owl could be heard, and then a third. And then, faintly, the sound of a second woman’s voice, pleading: “Just let me go...please…”

At that, Dale sank into his chair; it felt like he’d been punched in the stomach.

“Audrey…”

“Shut up!” Laura shrieked. Sobbing, she returned to the phone call. “Help me…please, help me. You have to stop me…I can’t hold him off. He’s going to make you pay. He’s going to—”

The line cut off. Dale sat bolt upright, holding the phone so tightly to his ear that it hurt as he strained to listen for more. But the call was ended. Frantically, he punched the message button again, repeating the entire thing, and then repeating it a third time as he frantically listened to every aspect of the call—especially background noises—hoping to figure out where it was coming from, who was there, what was happening.

As he finally hung up the phone, his hands were shaking.

“My god,” he whispered as the possibilities washed over him. He felt he’d be buried if he didn’t do something, act fast. Without conscious effort, he dialled the Sheriff’s Department, the numbers falling from his fingers as he held the phone to his ear again.

“Twin Peaks Sheriff’s—”

“Lucy, I need to talk to Harry.”

“Agent Cooper! Just a minute...he’s on the other line, but I can transfer you over, and once he’s done on the first call, he can—”

“Lucy!” Dale shouted. “It’s an emergency!”

She gasped and the call was transferred, and Harry picked up after one ring.

“Yeah?”

“Harry, Laura’s abducted Audrey.”

“What?”

“I don’t have time to explain, I just…she left a message. On the phone in my room. It’s her, and Audrey is in the background, and—”

“Slow down a minute, Coop,” Harry said. “Whaddya mean she abducted her?”

“I don’t know!” Dale replied, sighing heavily. “It was Laura’s voice, and Audrey was in the background, and there were owls, so it had to have been nighttime, and—”

_ Owl Cave. _

The idea appeared as if conjured from nothing, and Dale seized on it without thinking.

“I’m going up to Owl Cave.”

“You’re what?”

“Meet me there!” Dale ordered as he hung up the phone and stood up in one fluid motion before sprinting out of his room and down the hall towards the lobby.


	18. Chapter 18

Dale punched the accelerator as his rental car hit the first major incline in the road that wound up the side of Blue Pine Mountain towards Owl Cave. Once again, he knew he was exceeding the speed limit, but he couldn’t muster the wherewithal to care. The pain in Laura’s voice spurred him on, as did the thought that Audrey might be with her…

He cleared his head and focused on the foggy road in front of him.

_ What was she talking about?  _ he wondered.  _ Is she hurt physically? And who’s “he”? Her father? _

He gulped.

_ Is it BOB? _

Dale didn’t want to consider it, but the unassailable fact of the matter was that there  _ was  _ no other answer that made any sense. Laura knew where BOB was. Perhaps he was still tormenting her, having left her father the night of the incident in the train car.

_ But how? _

Passing through a patch of thick fog, he slowed his car to the speed limit. Rain pattered his windshield, and the whole world outside the car grew dark. It would be hours until sunlight reached the road through the thick forest canopy above; Dale knew that. But something about the whole thing felt eerily prescient. A harbinger of things to come.

He considered every angle and three days’ worth of investigations and observations.  _ If BOB has found a new host, who would that be?  _ His mind whirred through the possible suspects as his car hugged the road, winding up and around the switchbacks that led the way to the cave. He was amazed at how easily he remembered the route there. But suddenly, he wondered if he was going to the right place anyway. Laura had given him no firm answers about where to find her, so how had he arrived at the conclusion that she was at Owl Cave? From the owls hooting?  _ Tenuous at best _ , he told himself. Still, he put his trust in himself while his conscious mind ran away with him.

_ Focus…could it be Major Briggs? No…he wouldn’t have been as helpful as he was. Would he? If he were trying to trick me, maybe. Maybe it’s Bobby. Are Bobby and Laura still together? Or James Hurley? Think Dale—why didn’t you ask these questions days ago? You’ve been too concerned with your own mysteries… _

_ Maybe it’s Philip Gerard, the one-armed man? Or someone at the school? A teacher perhaps? Or is it someone from the Sheriff’s Department? One of the deputies? _

_ Harry? _

Dale’s blood ran cold.  _ He is acting so strangely…so differently from the way I remember him. _

He depressed the accelerator again and rounded a curve in the road; up ahead, there was an intersection. Dale slowed down as he approached, turning the wheel to take the dirt road to his right.

He was close now.

The road was narrow, barely wide enough for one car, though it was the only one in or out of this section of the woods. The darkness, oddly enough, felt promising; if things were as evil and horrific as he suspected, there was no other possible way for the road leading to it to look or feel except dark, and cold, and frightening.

He’d forgotten entirely the fact that the trees scared him so much. But he used it. Whatever fear he felt was nothing compared to what Laura and Audrey must be feeling…

Finally, he pulled into a clearing. The narrow road opened up; a hundred yards ahead, he saw a car parked between two Douglas firs. From far away the make and model was unclear, but the shape and colour were not: silvery blue, cast in shadow, but very clearly the boxy back end of Leland Palmer’s Chevrolet Caprice. Dale pulled his car up behind it, keying off the ignition almost as soon as he slammed the car into ‘Park’.

Stepping out into the clearing, he felt the soft squish of damp earth beneath his feet. Cool humidity swirled around his face and, when combined with the overcast sky above, brought with it the promise of rain. Far off, Dale heard the sound of a bird—a hawk or an eagle—and he shivered involuntarily, the hair on the back of his neck standing on end. But rather than shrinking back from it, he pressed forward, walking around the driver’s side of the car.

Its door was wide open; the battery had long since died, and the interior lights were out. As he peered inside, he saw the car phone in the center console resting on the seat.  _ She called from here,  _ he realized, looking around the car for any indication of where she might have gone. The soft ground revealed footprints. Dale trained his eyes on the impressions, following them around the car until they met up with a second set. The first were even, deep and purposeful; the second set was spaced wider apart, more shallow, as if whoever made them had been running.

The two sets of footsteps converged off to the side of the car, and it was clear from the disturbed dirt that a struggle had occurred. Much to his dismay, stuck in the dirt and partially obscured by the large exposed root of a nearby tree, was a black and white saddle shoe.

_ Laura _ , he thought.  _ And Audrey. _

His hands shook as he bent to pick up the shoe, brushing the dirt from the white upper until it gleamed.  _ Audrey wouldn’t stand for having dirty shoes _ , he thought.

He was absolutely gutted. This was the second time a woman he’d cared about—and, in fact, the second time that  _ this  _ woman—had been taken from him in such a manner, and the second time that he’d rushed out into these woods to save them. Something about  _ this  _ time was different though. He’d panicked upon the realization that Annie was missing, certainly. But he’d had the wind knocked out of him when he’d heard Audrey’s voice in the background of the phone message; standing here, holding her shoe in his hand, wondering where she was and if she was okay, imagining a world in which she suddenly didn’t exist…it felt wrong. Impossibly, horribly, gut-wrenchingly wrong.

As he looked at the ground and tried to piece together the story of the struggle—imagining where they might had gone, which way the tracks led, the likeliest outcome for this set of events—his chest ached and he felt short of breath. He let out a sigh, that turned into a hitched sob by the end.

_ What if she doesn’t come out of this?  _ he thought.

He set Audrey’s shoe down on the root.  

The trail led off from there towards a break in the trees, and Dale followed the tracks, heart thudding in his ears as he stepped, quickly and quietly, along the path. Eventually, he drew his service revolver, and as he peered into the dim woods ahead, for the first time on his journey, he doubted whether or not he was making the right call.

_ Should I have waited for backup?  _ he wondered.

Swallowing hard, he opened his mouth to speak. “Laura?” he called out. “Audrey?”

There was rustling in the brush to his left—a small animal, likely—and he blocked the sound out to focus on anything else: voices, crying, footsteps. But he heard nothing. He continued, creeping along the path until he came to its end, no more than twenty yards from the mouth of Owl Cave.

“Laura?” he called. “Laura, I know you’re here. It’s me, Agent Cooper.”

Dale peered into the cave and wished he’d brought his flashlight.

“Laura?” he called out, his voice echoing off the rock walls.

Faintly, from deep within the recess, he heard a sound: rocks clacking together, shuffling, murmured voices.

Female voices.

He stepped one foot and then the other beneath the shadow of the cave’s outer opening, and began the slow trek inside. Following the sound, his ears trained on the echoes, careful to avoid being misled down the side tunnels, he wound his way within. He sidestepped beer cans and broken glass, the long-ago remnants of weekend parties. The further he descended the darker it became, but his eyes began to adjust; several yards ahead of him, he saw the faintest glow. It grew in intensity and faded, in waves; with each cautious step he took towards it, the glow became clearer, more distinct.

Squinting into the darkness, he began to make out shapes. A figure standing in front of the rock wall, arms outstretched. Even in the dim light, he could see her long blonde hair and knee-length skirt…

“Laura—”

She didn’t move, but the glow brightened, illuminating the front of her body. It took Dale but a moment to realize that the wall she was looking at was the light’s source. 

Not only that, but the wall she faced, the one that glowed, was the one featuring the mysterious petroglyph.

He began his approach, scanning the ground in the sudden available light, searching for Audrey. He found her, curled on her side on the floor of the cave against the far wall behind Laura. His knees turned to rubber as he holstered his weapon and dashed to her side.

Kneeling in the dirt on the floor, he turned Audrey over onto her back. She awoke, startling and drawing back from him, her hands raised in defense.

“Audrey,” he whispered. “It’s me.”

Her eyes adjusted to the darkness as she studied his face. “Dale?” she croaked.

He reached over and touched her forehead, her cheek. She was cold, her skin damp; a fine layer of silt had mixed with the condensation to make a streaked, muddy mess across her face. She was dazed, but otherwise seemed okay. He heaved a sigh of relief.

A length of nylon pantyhose was wrapped around her wrists, securing them in front of her. Dale worked his fingertips beneath the fabric and tore it, little by little, until the binding gave way. Hands free, Audrey pushed herself up to sit, steadying herself against the wall and with one hand on her head.

“Are you okay?”

She didn’t answer the question. “Laura’s lost it,” she whispered. “I tried to stay awake. I was talking to her…I must have fallen asleep. What time is it?”

“Morning,” he said.

Audrey wouldn’t look him in the eyes; casting them down at the floor, chancing a peek at Laura now and again, she finally spoke. “She said taking me here was the only way to get you to come and help…” she whispered.

Dale glanced at Laura, then back to Audrey.  _ It worked... _

“It’s like she’s in a trance,” Audrey offered. “It’s like she’s in a trance.”

He cupped her cheek. “Stay here.”

Audrey was shaking, from cold and shock and fear. “Okay,” she intoned. She didn’t need to be told twice.

Dale stood up and brushed the dirt from his knees; he came up behind Laura, on her right, hopefully within her peripheral vision, not wanting her to spook.

“Laura?” he asked, reaching for her and touching her shoulder. “What are you looking at?”

Without turning to acknowledge him, she spoke. “You’re here now,” she said. “You came.”

“Yes, that’s right,” he said, speaking in a manner he might use to calm a child, or a hostage taker, or someone standing on the ledge of a building. He pulled all his strength and focused it on Laura. “That’s right. I’m here now. And we can go home.”

“Do you see it?”

Her voice had changed, coming out distorted and hollow, the same way it had on the phone. Dale straightened himself upright. “See what?”

“That,” she said, staring straight ahead.

He looked at where she was looking, and through the glow he could see the lines of the petroglyph, though nothing more. He blinked and looked back at her. “What do you see?”

Laura began to cry. “Curtains,” she whispered, as the glow on her face turned from golden to red. “The door is opening. You’re here now, and the door is opening…”

Startled, Dale turned back to the wall, where he too saw the red curtains—shimmering, long, undulating in an imperceptible breeze. Instincts kicked in—where he’d managed to keep his fear of the woods and of the faraway birds from his mind, his visceral reaction to the curtains caused him more alarm than he thought possible. Without thinking, he took two staggering steps back and away from the wall.

_ No…no, not again… _

“ _ Through the darkness…” _

Dale stared in horror as Laura began to recite the poem he’d first heard in his dream, her voice deep and angry. With every word, the red curtains appeared to grow more distinct, more  _ real _ . Beyond it all, the scent of scorched engine oil filled the air around him. He felt his heart pounding in his ears; panic closed his throat even as he felt the urge to vomit welling up inside him.

_ “...of future’s past... _ ”

“Dale?” Audrey called out from behind him. He couldn’t bear to divert his attention, if it was even possible to; rooted to the floor, his eyes glued to Laura and—beyond her, the curtains—he was frozen in fear.

“ _...the magician longs to see…” _

“Dale...” Audrey said as she came to his side.

“ _...one chants out…” _

“What is she saying?”

Alerted to Audrey’s presence, and driven by the inborn desire to protect—to protect Laura, to protect himself, but now, crucially, to protect Audrey—Dale snapped out of his fearful trance.  In a half-second he made his assessment, driven by his wits alone—before Laura’s incantation could reach its last verse, Dale lurched forward and tackled her, throwing his arms around her waist and dragging her back and away from the wall.

She shrieked in agony as he pulled her from her spot, but his decision had the desired effect: the red curtains began to fade from view, and the ominous glow within the cave dissipated. Within seconds, they were pitched in darkness once again.

“No!” Laura cried, twisting in Dale’s grasp. He held her fast, strong-arming her across the cave to the opposite wall, where he pinned her against the rock. Her face contorted, tears flowing freely as a waterfall down her cheeks. She beat her hands against his chest. “No, no, no…”

“Laura!” he cried out, grasping her face in his hands.

When she looked at him, through tears and her own contorted grimace, recognition dawned. Her tears began anew as she fell forward, her head landing against Dale’s shoulder. “Why did you stop me?” she whimpered.

“Stop you from what?”

But Laura went limp, her body slipping down against his; he lifted her in his arms, dead weight but lighter than he expected her to be. In the dim light from the faraway opening in the cave, he could make out Audrey’s form, her facial features, as clear as day. Standing a discreet distance away, Audrey had her hands folded across her chest; she, too, was crying. He met her eyes, and in spite of the sadness and fear he found there, her unmistakable strength shone through.

“What can I do?” she asked.

He adjusted Laura in his arms, throwing his eyes askance toward the petroglyph.

“We need to get out of here,” he said to her.

“Okay,” she replied with a nod as he started forward.

“Be careful,” Audrey said, and Dale saw her pointing at the ground.

It was then he noticed, for the first time, the thin rivulets of thick black ooze about to cross his path; he followed them with his eyes and realized that the source was high above their heads: the oil he’d first seen the night Annie disappeared, which formed the puddle within the sycamore tree circle at Glastonberry Grove, was dripping down the walls of Owl Cave.

He sidestepped the tendril threatening his way out and reached Audrey’s side. “Your shoes,” he said, noticing for the first time that Audrey was not just missing one shoe, but both; she was barefoot.

“I’m fine,” she stated. She took up a position at his elbow and slowly they began to walk, Audrey kicking rocks and cans out of the way ahead of him.

“Answer me, Audrey. Are you okay?” he asked after several seconds of silence. “Really?”

“Don’t worry about me,” Audrey whispered.

She gripped his elbow; her touch was reassuring, and he breathed easier knowing that this wasn’t the disaster he had fully expected it could have been. Cradling Laura against his chest, with Audrey keeping step at his side, he focused on the light at the cave’s entrance.

The sound of sirens flooded the cave, and eventually voices calling their names were as much of a compass as the pale, early morning light. Flashlight beams met them next, and with fifty yards to go until they reached the open air, Sheriff Truman and Deputy Hawk appeared.

“Coop!” they shouted in unison.

“We’re gonna need to radio the hospital,” Dale said. “Tell them it’s Laura.”

“What happened?” Harry asked, gaining Dale’s side.

“There’s no time,” he said. “Help me get her to the truck.”

Harry, though confused, nodded and raced back, throwing open the back door before returning and taking Laura from Dale’s arms. Free from the weight of her, Dale stumbled and fell, caught only at the last minute by Audrey, who hauled him up, shakily, to his feet once again.

He turned back and looked at the cave. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” he muttered.

“It’s okay,” Audrey told him.

“No,” he told her, coming to his full height and facing her. “What happened to you…it’s…”

“Over,” she finished the sentence for him. “It’s over. It’s done.”

He reached up and stroked a thumb across her cheekbone, swiping at a smudge of dirt. The first of the rain had started to fall, and Audrey—clad, he saw now, in only a thin sweater and her skirt—shivered.

Hawk joined them. “The hospital’s expecting us,” he said. “They’ll take Laura in. They want to look over you both, too.”

Dale saw no sense in arguing with the sheriff’s deputy at his side. Instead, with his arm still held tightly by Audrey, he walked the distance to his own car—driven up by another deputy; Dale had left the keys in the ignition, and the doors unlocked. Hawk, however, walked around to the driver’s side.

_ Good sense,  _ Dale thought as he braced himself against the roof of the car and opened the back door for Audrey to get in. As he shut it, he turned back again to look at the cave, and saw Audrey’s shoe on the root. He stepped over to retrieve it.  _ Where’s the other one?” _

“Agent Cooper?”

Dale turned back to look at the car. “Audrey’s other shoe. Where is it?”

Harry started his truck, and the siren squawked twice.

“We should go, Agent Cooper.”

_ Yes…yes, he’s right. Shoes aren’t important… _

He looked into the backseat and saw Audrey. She sat, stunned and unmoving save for the slow, shell-shocked blink of her eyes, staring straight ahead. And he couldn’t blame her. In spite of the fact that he couldn’t deliver on his intention regarding her footwear, he still felt the overpowering need to hold her.

He suddenly felt as though his chest had opened up; he breathed in, the bracing and damp air filling his lungs.

_ Maybe I was wrong to have dismissed her… _ he considered as he watched her smooth her hair behind her ears, tired eyes blinking as she struggled to stay awake and composed.  _ Maybe I was wrong about Audrey entirely, all along. _

As if she felt him thinking about her, at that very moment Audrey turned to face him. Their eyes met, and though she held his gaze for far longer than he expected she might, in the end she pulled away from him, flinching, as if she’d been burned.

Dale tried not to take it personally. He may have facilitated her recovery from the cave, but there was so much more left to do. He lowered his own eyes and trudged across the soft earth until he reached the car.

As he put his hand on the door handle, he heard the unmistakable sound of an owl from high in the trees behind him. Turning to look, Dale discovered he was more captivated by the mountain Owl Cave belonged to than the source of the owl’s odd mid-morning hoot.

“Hawk?” he asked. “What’s up there?”

Hawk followed Dale’s line of sight. “Hiking trails, mostly. A campsite that’s pretty popular with the local Boy Scout troupe,” he said.

Dale recalled the oil snaking its way down the walls and across the floor of the cave. He took a stab in the dark, turning to Hawk. “Glastonbury Grove?”

Hawk furrowed his brows. “Yeah,” he said. “How did you know that?”

Dale turned back towards the mountain. The image of Laura—transfixed, staring at the petroglyph, reciting that terrible poem as the red curtains appeared—suddenly took on much larger and more sinister implications. He watched as Harry pulled away in his own truck, heading down the mountain; Hawk was already in the driver’s seat, and the car hummed beneath his hand, pressed against the roof.

He stooped and climbed down into the passenger seat, then shut the door. Hawk pulled out and spun the car around to follow Harry’s, and as they drove down the winding roads back to town, only one question consumed Dale’s mind:  _ Who is BOB? _

There was only one answer that came back to him now. Only one that made some kind of terrible sense, and it broke his heart to think of it.

_ Laura _ .

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please wish me luck--I want this story finished by May 21! I need all the positive vibes I can get!!! XD


	19. Chapter 19

“Diane, I’m sitting at Calhoun Memorial Hospital at the bedside of Laura Palmer. It’s been almost twelve hours since we left Owl Cave. She has not yet awakened from the near comatose state she fell into when I interrupted the apparent ritual she was undertaking. We are monitoring her condition, which is thankfully stable, but no one can explain why this has happened or when she will awaken again. The only thing we can do is wait, which is precisely what I have been doing since I was given the okay to…  

“It would be impossible to adequately describe to you what I experienced today. Most alarmingly, Diane: I believe Laura Palmer is being inhabited by BOB. This is a hunch, and without speaking to Laura I have no proof of this. But the sum total of her actions over the last few days make an incredible amount of sense when taken in conjunction with this. The changes in her behaviour and mannerisms, the frantic way with which she has approached conversation with me, and the very words themselves…it’s clear now, in retrospect, that she has been trying to tell me this since I arrived here.

“Questions remain. Is this BOB trying to communicate with me? Or is it Laura herself? How is that even possible? And why would she do it?

“I have no answers to this. All I know is that Laura took Audrey with her in an attempt to lure me to the cave, seemingly with the intention of bringing me with her into the Red Room again. That is the one of the only things I am certain of: the ‘Fire walk with me’ incantation Laura recited as I arrived triggered the appearance of the curtains again. Had I not stopped her when I did, I am convinced neither one of us would be here now.

“Another thing to note: Owl Cave sits directly beneath Glastonbury Grove. I saw the same engine oil substance dripping down the walls as we left, and Hawk confirmed its location as well. I suspect if you were to draw a straight line from the petroglyph to the sycamore trees, they would line up perfectly. The link is indelible. Is the cave a more concentrated space than the grove above? What might we find the further down we go?

“These are all questions that have no answers, at least not until Laura awakens. As a precaution, she is being given a steady dose of haloperidol intravenously. If I’m right, the drug will have a stabilizing effect on the inhabiting spirit, much as it did in my own time within the body of Philip Gerard. I have also instructed Sheriff Truman to put her under protective custody, as much for her own safety as for those of the people around her.

“I know it’s unlikely that you’ll ever hear these stream-of-consciousness ramblings, Diane, and if you do I can only imagine how little sense they’ll make. But the more I sit here the clearer it becomes that what I need is someone to talk to…”

* * *

Dale clicked off the tape recorder and slipped it back inside the pocket of his suit coat, which he’d draped over the armrest of the chair beside Laura’s bed. The intermittent pinch of pain in his knee from where he’d struck it against a rock when he’d stumbled was all that remained, physically, to remind him of the events in the woods that morning.

Emotionally…psychologically…that was an entirely different story.

But he was roused to full alertness by the stirring at his side as, for the first time since they’d arrived there, Laura slowly regained her senses.

The first thing she did was start to cry.

“Laura?”

She looked over at him in shock. “Where is he? Why isn’t he here?”

His heart sank. “BOB?”

She nodded, and Dale suddenly had the answer he was looking for. He struggled to compose himself.

“You’re on a drug called haloperidol,” Dale said, motioning to the IV. “It suppresses them, forces them down and away.”

Laura closed her eyes and shook her head. “Oh, god…I’m so sorry…”

Her voice was clear, if weak; there was nothing about her to indicate that she was in fact harbouring a malevolent entity within her. Dale scooted closer in his chair, feeling the same intense buzzing all of a sudden that he’d felt the first time they’d been that close. “For what?”

She shut her eyes and grimaced, and for the first time realized that her wrists were shackled to the bed frame. She let out a soft whimper. “I thought I could contain him…” she said as her voice cracked around the words.

Dale’s shock was electric. “Contain him?”

Laura groaned. “To hold him in, yeah. I didn’t want anyone else to be hurt by him, and I thought—well, he  _ wanted _ to come in so badly, and I thought I was strong enough…but he was so much  _ stronger  _ than I thought.”   

“That’s not your fault.”

“I was so stupid. I was weak…” she wept. “I didn’t want him to hurt anyone. It was so hard, but I fought him. I tried  _ so hard _ to fight him…”

“Laura,” Dale said, his voice suddenly stern. “Listen to me: what you did was brave. You held him off for over a month, without the aid of this drug or anyone else even knowing.” Saying the words out loud made Dale realize what a remarkable feat it was. He stroked her hand. “You are far stronger than you think you are.”

Laura struggled to meet his eyes, but when she did, he saw clarity and a deep sadness, wholly hers. There was no distance, nothing held back.

She was Laura, completely.

He loosened the strap around her wrist, confident that the risk she posed had been minimized if not eliminated entirely.

“How did you figure it out?” she asked softly as her hand fell free.

He squeezed her fingertips and sighed. “I wasn’t trying to,” he admitted. “I was searching for a way home…”

“Home?” she asked. “You mean your time?”

Dale’s eyes widened in astonishment. “You knew?”

Laura nodded slowly. “ _ He  _ knows. So I know.”

Desperation filled Dale’s words as he sat back in his chair and processed what he was hearing. “What  _ else  _ do you—?”

Laura closed her eyes, knitting her brows together across the bridge of her nose. “I know that BOB wanted me since I was little, but that when you arrived the day after I took him  in…he wanted you too,” she told him, adding—in a voice lowered and softened to the barest of whispers: “I think a part of him has been after you for years, too.”

Dale shivered as memories from his childhood swam back to him—dreams, visions, fire, death. It made an incredible amount of sense. He felt sick. “I think I knew that,” he said slowly.

She opened her eyes then. “BOB thought the other Dale wasn’t much fun. He was too easy to corrupt. BOB wanted a challenge. He was going to…bring another ‘you’ here.” She paused, adding: “For me.”

A chill ran up and down the length of his spine as her words hit their mark.  _ This was all a trap…but why? _

Laura pulled her hand away and, as if reading his mind, answered his question. “At first he seemed satisfied to just be there, to just  _ be _ within me. But then he wanted new experiences. He wanted…” she looked up at him as a blush crept into her cheeks. “He wanted  _ you _ . He wanted to feel  _ you  _ and for  _ me _ to have you, so that  _ he _ could have you.”

She lifted her free hand to her face, covering it as best she could. Dale skirted the end of the bed and came around to the other side, loosening the other bond that her left hand fast to the bed frame. With both hands free, she covered her entire face and sobbed, achingly, for several minutes. Dale could only stand there, ineffectual, while she wept.

“Please,” she said. “You have to know, I didn’t want this to happen. I tried to stop him and—”

“You don’t need to apologize, Laura,” he said. “It wasn’t me that that happened to, and it wasn’t you who did it. Not really.”

She nodded and leaned her head back against the pillow; eyes closed, shoulders shaking, she continued to cry.

“What about your father?”

“My father?” Laura asked. “My father was with BOB for more years than he wasn’t.” Fresh tears escaped from between her lashes. “I don’t know my father. I don’t think I ever knew him.”

Dale held her hand and waited patiently for a moment to pass before he continued. “What else happened in the train car, Laura? When BOB left him for you?”

Laura sighed and took several long seconds to compose herself. Finally, she spoke. “I knew he was going to kill me if I didn’t let him in,” she said. “I didn’t  _ want  _ to die, but I think I was  _ ready  _ to die. Does that make sense?”

He nodded. “In a way,” he replied. “But you chose to fight instead?”

Laura opened her eyes. “Yes,” she said. “I let him in but I started fighting him. I had to. I thought I could resist, keep him at bay. I really didn’t have a plan, and he was so much stronger than I expected. So I just ran from that train as far away as I could, following the tracks…I wanted to get as far away from everyone as possible, but all I did was bring you here, because I crossed over into Montana, I guess.” She shrugged, her shoulders lifting and dropping in the smallest of movements. “It was all part of his plan, I think.”

“We were both pawns, it seems,” he said, trying to reassure her, trying to reassure himself. “You, and me. The other me.”

“What about the other  _ me _ ?” Laura asked.

Dale took her hand in his again, but didn’t answer the question. He didn’t have the heart.

Laura pressed him. “Dale, what about the other me?”

“Laura—” he began, his eyes averted.

She slackened, her hand dropping from his. “There is no other me, is there?” she asked. “He killed me, didn’t he?”

Dale kept his eyes focused on her hand in his, still unable to meet her gaze. “What happened to Ronette in the train car?” he asked softly.

Laura shook her head, her words once again splintering as she spoke. “Is she dead where you’re from?”

“No,” he replied. “She survived.”

She nodded. “ _ He _ didn’t kill Ronette, because she was already dead by the time I left the train,” Laura told him. “But he would have tried to hurt her if she’d still been alive.”

“I know,” Dale sighed.

Laura sat up straighter. “We need to do something. We need to stop him,” she said, pleading with him, clutching his hand. “I don’t know how to do this on my own.”

“That’s why you reached out to me?”

She nodded. “I  _ knew  _ you weren’t the same Dale, the morning I came to see you…and I knew that you had to help, but I didn’t know how to tell you, and—”

“But I know now. And you know,” he said. “So together we can figure this out.”

“ _ How _ ?”

Dale shook his head and tried to process the question. “Well…why did you go to Owl Cave?”

“ _ He _ wanted me to go there. I think he has to return. Maybe because you were getting closer to figuring this out…or maybe because I wasn’t letting him do what he wanted.”

“And why did you want me to come down to the cave?”

“Because,” Laura began, before pausing to consider. “Because…I knew there was a chance that if BOB could open the gate at will, and if I could go in there with him…maybe the only way to set everything right again was for you to go there too. To go back where you came from. I don’t know.” She sighed. “I thought there must have been some way to close the door, you know?

It was an intriguing idea, though one he wasn’t certain he wanted to try. “But what about the me who belongs  _ here _ ?” he asked. “How do we return him where he belongs?

He recalled Audrey’s comment that she’d seen dozens of him when she had gone into the Red Room.  _ What if the wrong me comes out? _

Laura shook her head. “I don’t know.” She paused. “Is Audrey okay?”

Dale clenched his hand at the mention of her name, but couldn’t answer the question; he hadn’t seen her since mid-morning, when they’d both been rushed into the hospital and sent to separate rooms to be seen by doctors. He wasn’t even sure she’d been discharged yet. “I honestly—”

“I didn’t hurt her, did I?” Laura asked. “I just needed to get you there, and I know how you feel about her…”

_ How I feel? _

“Laura, I—” he choked on the words. “The way I feel about Audrey?”

“Dale…” she said, cocking her head to the side. “The way you look at her…”

“The  _ other  _ me, you mean?”

She looked down at their hands and then back up at him. “You flinched when I said her name,” she said. “She means more to you than you’re letting on.” She shrugged. “Or maybe it’s the other Audrey anyway…”

He stared at their interlocked fingers.  _ Maybe…  _

“I’m not upset, honest…in spite of what I said the other morning. The way I acted. It’s…it wasn’t me.”

“That’s right,” Dale said, glad for the change in topic. “It wasn’t you. You have to believe that.”

Laura nodded. “I do.”

She held his hand. “You feel the vibration?” she asked.

“You feel it too.”

Laura nodded, running her fingertips along the underside of his palm. “I can help you,” she whispered. “Because, with him—with the other you—there wasn’t—”

_ Of course!  _ “We aren’t in sync, you and I,” Dale said, breathless at the realization.

“Right,” Laura said. “We aren’t in sync at all. Because you’re from  _ there  _ and I’m from  _ here _ …”

“Audrey felt it too. And I felt it with her,” Dale said. “But only with you two…”

“That  _ must _ mean something.”

Dale nodded, but refocused on the task at hand. “If you go in there…what if you don’t come out?”

“Well I can’t stay out here,” Laura said, in her strongest voice yet, clear and unwavering. “I won’t. Not if I can help it.”

“But we need to trap him in there or else it does none of us any good,” Dale said. “How do we do that?”

“I don’t know,” she replied.

_ We’ll come up with something _ , he thought.  _ Until then _ …“Let’s not worry about this tonight,” he said. “You should rest.”

“I can’t,” she said. “He’s going to come back.”

“No, he won’t. Not when you’re on this medication.”

She seemed to relax a little, but only barely. “Am I under arrest?”

“No,” he replied. “But you are in protective custody. It’s not the same thing. But I wouldn’t advise that you—”

“I’m not leaving the hospital,” she said. “If this…haloperidol…if it helps? I want it. I need to be me again…”

Dale smiled at her. “You’ll have protective detail. Someone outside your door at all times.”

“Okay,” she said, yawning deeply and closing her eyes—relaxing—for the first time since he’d known her.  

He sighed. “We’ll figure it out,” he told her. “I promise.”

“I know.”

“Okay,” he said, standing up. “You should get some rest.”

She nodded against the pillow and as he stood there, watching her, she whispered to him: “Thank you.”

“For what?”

“For believing me. For helping me. For being here.”

_ You’re the one I should be thanking _ , he thought. But he didn’t say it; her breathing had evened out, deepening as she lapsed into sleep. He didn’t want to disturb her. For the first time in hours, he tiptoed out of the room, confident that she would be okay overnight, and that the freshness of sleep—for both of them—would restore and revitalize them.

They had big things ahead.   

* * *

“Diane, I’m sitting in the parking lot of the Great Northern Hotel. The day is nearly done, and to be quite frank, it feels like the longest day I’ve ever lived. I’ve just finished speaking with Laura, who is no longer under the influence of BOB, as long as we keep her on haloperidol. She knows about the parallel worlds. She knows I don’t belong here. And she is determined to help get me home, as determined as I am to remove BOB from this world—from all worlds—for good. How to do that is a mystery we haven’t solved, but I’m confident we will. Eventually...

“But today isn’t over. Audrey was discharged from the hospital tonight. Her second visit this week, Diane, and both times I feel I am partially responsible. I’m going to see her, finally, to explain everything.

“My life seems to be hanging in the balance between these two women. Both of them seem destined to intersect with me, in some way or another. I’m not sure why or for what purpose, but the sensation I feel is that I’m in limbo, pulled in both directions simultaneously and thus unable to move at all.

“Everything converges on them. That’s why I need to find Audrey. Tonight.”


	20. Chapter 20

Dale marched through the lobby of the hotel and was halfway across it when he overheard two staff members talking about the fact that Ben Horne was in Seattle for the rest of the week; in their next breath, they talked about not needing to bring Mrs. Horne her regular breakfast because she was in New York. 

Something about knowing that Audrey was, once again, abandoned by her parents lit a fire beneath Dale; having just come from Laura’s bedside, he supposed that didn’t help.  _ What is it with this town and their daughters?  _ he wondered.

But the fact that neither of Audrey’s parents were in the building also bolstered his decision to head directly to the door that separated the hotel from the Horne family private residence, far away at the end of the hotel. He passed Jerry Horne’s little-used office, the hallway that led to Ben’s office, and the door to a conference room before coming to stand at the double doors One short rap against the door was all he got out, however, before the door opened from within, revealing Audrey in her pyjamas.

Fist raised, knuckles down, ready to knock again, Dale froze. “Audrey.”

“Hi.”

He lowered his hand. “I was—” he started before being forced to clear his throat. “I was just coming to see you—”

“I was just going to see you— ”

Dale paused. “You were?”

Audrey blushed. She opened the door further and took a step back. “Would you like to come in?”

He nodded, his mouth suddenly dry and incapable of forming words, as he followed her into the foyer of the home, taking a look around him as he entered. The foyer was wide, twenty feet across at least. Three long steps separated the entryway from the main floor of the house, and leading off from the top landing, to the left and the right, was a hallway. Beyond the width of the hallway to the right was the wood-beamed living room, and on the left was what appeared to be a kitchen. Between the two spaces sat a circular dining table.

“Are you okay?”

The question caught Dale by surprise; he had forgotten why he was there in the first place. It was only when she spoke that he remembered that _she_ was the reason. And yet…

As his eyes adjusted to the relative darkness of the entryway, her silhouetted features coming into view. Her hair was damp, slightly frizzy, and the paleness of her cheeks seemed to make her glow from within. He took in the sight of her and felt as though he was looking at her for the first time, truly, and found himself—still—unable to speak.  

“Dale?” 

He shook his head. “Hm?”

“Are you okay?” she asked him again.

Dale loosened his stance a little, breathing life into his limbs as he swallowed and tried to find his voice. “I—uh…shouldn’t it be me asking you that question?” 

Audrey shook her head. “You’ve been at the hospital all day,” she said. “I just thought—”

“Not for me,” he said. “I was with Laura.”

There was silence, punctuated by the shimmering clink of Audrey’s car keys in her hand as she began to fidget. 

“Oh?” she asked.

Dale had always been a master at reading people, their thoughts and intentions appearing to him as naturally as if they were his own. He’d been struggling with this ability of late—owing, he suspected, to his twenty-five year absence from life outside of the Red Room. But when it came to the women he’d cared about, nothing was more baffling that the rising inflection in their voice at the end of a question like that. 

_ “Oh?” _ she’d asked him, and at the sound of her voice, his heart sank.

He saw her, in the darkness, lift her hand and deposit her car keys and purse onto the console table beside the door. “I hope she’s okay.” 

“Audrey—”

“Are you here to take my statement then?”

Dale shook his head. “No, I—”

“Because I gave one to Sheriff Truman already. So if you have somewhere else to be.”

“Audrey—”

She shook her head and smiled—turning her face towards the light, it reflected off her skin and illuminated her features, and Dale was almost positive he could see tears in her eyes—before taking a step up toward the landing. Her hand flew to her head, and she pressed a delicate fingernail to her temple as she laughed. “You know, wouldn’t you believe it…I—I just need to…” her laugh trailed off and she sighed, but never lost her smile. “Make yourself at home. There’s coffee in the kitchen. I can make a fresh…pot…”

She didn’t finish the sentence, but took the last two stairs to the landing at a fair clip before walking off down the hallway to the left. Left in the cavernous space she’d so suddenly vacated, Dale stood awkward and alone, wondering what he’d said…

_ Of course you know what you said _ , he scolded himself. He took the stairs to the landing and peered off down the hall. 

_ Don’t follow,  _ he thought, counting his breaths and the seconds that were elapsing between her departure and the moment when he would, absolutely, go after her.  _ Not yet…  _

He took in his surroundings, still counting up, although he was immediately taken in by his observations of their living space and soon lost track of the numbers in his head. There were few adornments to indicate that any kind of family resided in the home. No photos on any of the walls, no mementos. It reminded Dale of a museum, something vaguely anthropological; Benjamin Horne’s mark was all over it. The art that did adorn the walls was overwhelmingly Northwest Coastal in nature, items that seem curated and collected without thought to form or function or their sacred purpose to the people who created them. The furniture in the living room was pleasing to the eye but thoughtless of comfort, hard angles and stiff cushions made of fabric that looked rough and scratchy to the touch. The overall sense of rustic charm struck a chord of pageantry, as though it were a home being staged for a photo shoot, a two-page spread in  _ Better Homes and Gardens _ , as opposed to a place where a family resided, where children grew up.

Dale couldn’t imagine Audrey as a child in a place like this. He could scarcely imagine her here now…

Turning away from the living room, Dale found himself in a kitchen not half as large as he expected it to be, a fact which surprised him. Shocking, too, was its utilitarianism, though Dale wasn’t entirely certain that any of the Hornes used it themselves.  _ That’s what cooks are for _ , he thought. But, nevertheless, there was a six-burner cooktop and a double oven, a large refrigerator, ample space on the marble countertops for bowls of glossy fruit and expensive pieces of kitchen gadgetry. It was impeccably maintained, cleaner than any kitchen he’d ever seen

Dale’s eye was drawn to the Italian stovetop coffeemaker sitting on the counter. It was an attractive piece, retro in design and stylish in a way that was incongruous with the rest of the home that he’d seen; he wondered if it had ever been used, or if it simply existed there for looks. He walked over to it, remembering Audrey’s earlier comment about coffee.  _ Was she actually offering coffee? Should he make a pot? Did she want some? _

_ She’s probably five minutes away from kicking you to the curb, Dale,  _ he reminded himself. 

Still, he shrugged off his long coat and draped it over the back of one of the chairs surrounding the dining table before walked over to the stove. He unbuttoned the cuffs of his dress shirt and began rolling the sleeves, delicately folding the material as he made his way up his arm to just below the elbow; a long scratch, sustained in the cave when Laura fought to get away from him, burned as he grazed it with his fingertips. But he ignored the pain, searching the countertop for coffee beans. He lifted every ceramic lid, opened every cupboard door, and searched through every cabinet drawer, and at the end of his search, came up empty.

As a final resort, Dale peered into the coffee pot, lifting the lid absently and feeling his frustration growing.  _ If I lived here, where would I keep the coffee beans? _ he thought, his focus narrowing as the quest for coffee beans threatened to consume him. He leaned against the countertop and shut his eyes, exhaling loudly as he tried to steady his racing heart.

_ Why does this matter to you so much?  _

He sighed.  _ Because right now it’s what you can control. Making coffee is what you can control.  _

“And you can’t even find the coffee beans…” he muttered to himself. He squeezed his eyes shut and sighed, letting his imagination run away with him.

All of a sudden, he conjured up a scene of domestic bliss which he’d scarcely allowed himself to dream of in even his wildest imaginings: of a kitchen, not exactly like this but comfortably appointed, on a lazy Saturday morning, listening for the purr from the stove to know that the coffee is ready as he finished a crossword puzzle across a small dinette table from a beautiful woman whose hand rested, intertwined with his own, next to their uncleared breakfast dishes…

The fact that the beautiful woman he pictured happened to have Audrey’s face struck him as equal parts odd, comforting, and wildly inappropriate. He stood up ramrod straight and shook his head to dislodge the image.

It had been a minute, no more, but Audrey hadn’t re-appeared yet. Dale felt his palms begin to sweat and he clenched them into fists at his sides before walking down the hallway, following in her footsteps.

He heard her crying, the sound coming from behind the only door in the hallway that wasn’t closed completely. He trod the floorboards, swallowing hard as he reached the door and pressed his hand against it to push it open.

“Audrey?”

She was standing against the bathroom counter, leaned over the sink; her shoulders heaved as she sobbed. It was clear that she hadn’t heard him come in. He cleared his throat, and at the sound, she startled, standing up straight and swiping at her eyes.

“Oh! I didn’t hear you!” she laughed, painfully, as she forced a smile across her face. It remained for a split second before crumbling away. “I was just…oh, you know, feeling sorry for myself.”

“Why?”

She shrugged. “I shouldn’t be. I mean—Dale Cooper, here in my home. It’s what I always wanted, since the first day I saw you…”

He shook his head. “I don’t understand…”

Audrey sighed. “It’s nothing,” she whispered. “Why did you come here, Dale? Really?”

He straightened his shoulders. “I wanted to talk to you…about the other night. My tapes.”

“Right,” she said. “I suppose you’re going to tell me I shouldn’t have listened to them, because they’re private? Or classified?”   


Dale shook his head. “No, Audrey. Not at all.”

She looked up at him. “No?”

He took a step forward, lifting his hand to cover hers on the bathroom counter. “It must have been a lot to take in, and I’m sorry I wasn’t there to tell you in person. That’s not how I wanted you to find out about what’s been going on.”

Stunned into silence and stillness, Audrey could only blink at him. 

Dale looked down at their hands and squeezed, gently, reassuringly. “No, I wanted to know if you were okay. With what you heard.” He looked up at her. “And if you had any questions, I—”

Audrey closed the gap between them and threw her arms around his shoulders, burying her face in his neck as she wept. Caught off guard, Dale embraced her back, clasping her to him just as she pulled back once again, lifted herself up onto her tiptoes, and pressed her lips to his.


	21. Chapter 21

Dale had been kissed by Audrey exactly once—a hasty peck the day she gave him the photos of the drug dealers at Dead Dog Farm—and he had kissed her exactly once, lips against her forehead when he had coaxed her through the worst of her drug withdrawal after her captivity at One Eyed Jack’s.

Neither of those prepared him for the sensation of having Audrey Horne’s body pressed against his, beneath his hands, lips parting as she sealed her mouth against his and drove them both through the hallway and into her bedroom.

Nor was he adequately prepared for how it would feel to push her against the wall and dip his head to her clavicle, the base of her throat, the side of her neck, hearing the little gasps she made as he palmed her breast beneath her flannel pyjama top and—

“No,” he whispered suddenly, slowing his movements as his heartbeat thudded in his ears.

“What?”

He shook his head, resting his forehead against hers. “Audrey, no…we can’t…”

She didn’t say a thing, but he could sense her disappointment. Her shoulders sagged, but he felt her nod in agreement. “Yeah,” she whispered.

“I’m sorry…”

“No,” she replied. “I know…I just…I had to see. I had to see if…”

“If what?”

She shut her eyes. “You’re not  _ my  _ Dale Cooper,” she said. “And as much as I wish you were…” her voice broke and she leaned her head back against the wall and shut her eyes.

Dale brushed her hair away from her face, one hand on each cheek as he kissed her once more, finally and fully, before pulling back. “I’m not your Dale Cooper.”

“And I’m not your Audrey Horne.”

He felt the tingling sensation then, as if it were all part of some cruel joke, a bolded punchline.

“I think I knew you were different, before the tapes, before everything,” she whispered to him, reaching her hand up to thread her fingers through his. “Do you love her?” she asked. “Do you love her the same way that I love you?”

Dale sighed.  _ My Audrey is a world away…I turned her down…I cared for her so deeply I pushed her away… _

“I made so many mistakes, Audrey,” he whispered. “I hurt so many people. And now that I’m here, I’m hurting people all over again. It’s—”

“You have to go back,” Audrey said through the cracks in her voice. “You need to go back.”

Dale gave an involuntary shiver. “It’s not that simple, Audrey…”

“Why not?” she urged, tears threatening to occlude her voice. “You just go back to the cave, you and Laura, and—”

Dale shook his head and took a step back. “Audrey, I spent twenty five years trapped in there. You don’t understand…it’s—”

She nodded and stepped forward, reaching for him. “It’s okay,” she said as she rested her hand against his arm. “Dale, look at me...it’s okay.”

He shook his head; memories flashed back to him—images, sensations, desperation, hopelessness. He began to shake. “I don’t know if I can go back in there, Audrey,” he said. “I mean, I know I  _ can _ . I think it  _ wants  _ me in there. Laura and me. It  _ wants  _ us to go in there. But that’s what scares me. What does it want from us? Maybe it isn’t that simple. Maybe—”

“Okay,” she whispered. “You don’t have to decide now. You don’t have to do anything now…”

But Dale  _ wasn’t  _ okay. His vision had begun to narrow, and he felt his chest constricting. Sweaty hands clenched tightly closed, going more numb with each passing second.  _ My body is responding as if I’m in the Red Room again right now,  _ he thought, trying to rationalize the sensation, to no immediate avail.  _ My heart rate is increasing because my body is trying to supply me with the blood and energy I need to run away. At this point my blood sugar level is increasing. My hands are going numb because I don’t need my extremities. If my eyes were open, you’d be able to see my pupils dilating, preparing me for needing to be able to see… _

He tried to breathe, but there was nothing for it.  _ All of this for nothing,  _ he thought, feeling as though he were going to die.

“Audrey—”

“Sssh,” she whispered, and through the haze of his panic attack, he felt her fingertips against his skin, brushing across his forehead, along his cheekbones, and down the sides of his neck. With the lightest of touches, she grazed her fingernails along his arms, down to his hands, and then back up again. “Sssh…”

It was remarkable the immediately effect Audrey’s touch had on him. In the span of seconds, he felt his body reacting, slowing down, and when he opened his eyes to see Audrey gazing back at him, he blew out a heavy but shaky breath that he didn’t know he was holding. He felt suddenly dizzy. Audrey cocked her head to the side.

“You should sit down,” she told him.

He saw no reason to disagree; he allowed Audrey to lead him to the edge of her bed, and only when he sat down did he notice how badly he was shaking.

Audrey came around to sit next to him.

“I’m so sorry,” he muttered. “After everything you’ve been through today…”

“It’s perfectly understandable,” she said. “Don’t apologize.”

“But you—” he started. “Laura. She took you there. Just like Windom Earle did…”

“Honestly,” she replied. “I’m fine. I’m more worried about you…”

He looked down at his hands, glistening with the sheen of his perspiration. “I don’t want to go back,” he said.  _ But I have to go back… _

He felt Audrey’s hand slip into his, and cast his eyes downward to see their fingers intertwined in his lap.

“Dale, you don’t need to decide anything tonight,” she said. “It’s late.”

He nodded. He had no idea what time it was, but he was exhausted. Without being actively aware of it, he slowly came to the realization that he was lying on his side, his head against the softest down feather pillow he’d ever rested on. And curled beside him, facing him, her fingers laced through his hair, Audrey continued to soothe.

“Laura is possessed by an evil spirit,” he said.

“I know. I saw it.”

“I’m sorry I didn’t stop her before it happened,” he told her.

“You couldn’t have known.”

He recalled the feeling of rest that he’d awoken with two mornings earlier, with Audrey in his bed. “I haven’t slept as well as I slept that night…”

“Me neither,” she replied. “Not before, and not since.”

Dale relaxed and felt himself tiring, falling into that liminal space between wakefulness and dreams where truths are easy. He sighed, feeling the warmth of Audrey’s hand resting against his face. 

“You’re too good,” he said. “I should be the one taking care of you.”

“Nonsense,” she replied. “Sleep now, okay?”

“Mmm,” he said, taking a breath before continuing. “I do love you, Audrey.”

Audrey didn’t immediately respond, but her hands never left his cheek. “I love you, too,” she replied.

It was enough for him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What can I say...I have a thing for sleepy Cooper...


	22. Chapter 22

The next morning arrived with little fanfare—a pale grey light filtered out above the falls just outside the window, transforming the black pre-dawn into glorious pastels that eventually stained the sky, puddling and swirling like watercolours on soaked paper. Over the roar of the falls—so loud, so ever-present, he could feel rumbling beneath him—he heard birds singing, the surest sign of a Spring that had taken its time to arrive but was now standing on their doorstep, wearing her floral vestments and carrying warm, sweet breezes in her arms, an offering of atonement for her tardiness. He longed to throw open the window and let the curtains billow, carried as much on sunlight as the wind. 

Carving out a space for himself in the stillness of the moment, Dale took in his surroundings in a way he hadn’t been able to the night before. It was a no-nonsense space, larger—he was sure—than most bedrooms belonging to girls Audrey’s age. Aside from the bed, there was little other furniture to crowd and clutter the space, just a simple four-drawer dresser, a bedside table, and a white wrought-iron vanity. Four shelves along a far wall held all manner of books, from small novels and larger school texts; on the floor in front of them was a stack of glossy magazines, the only true shock in the entire room. It was hard to imagine Audrey reading magazines.  _ Oliver Twist _ , maybe.  _ Jane Eyre _ , certainly. But not  _ Vogue _ . Not  _ People. _

Audrey set trends, she didn’t follow them.

With the eyes of a detective, he picked up on little details that he was sure others would miss: through the slightly-ajar closet door, a peek of dainty, pink floral wallpaper; stuck haphazardly to the ceiling, tiny glow in the dark stars and crescent moons; on one of the shelves in the corner, beside a book, a teddy bear and next to that a porcelain ballet dancer figurine in baby pink. It was very much the room of a young woman, but with just enough below the surface to let anyone know that it had once belonged to a little girl.

A little girl who grew up in a castle shrouded in mist on the edge of a waterfall, who read books about escape and dreamed of getting away, with stars above her bed…

Dale couldn’t help but wonder how much of  _ this  _ Audrey crossed-over with  _ his  _ Audrey, but if he had to guess, he’d imagine quite a bit of it did.

Cloaked in the warmth of the duvet and surrounded by the heady scent of Audrey’s perfume mixed with the scent of  _ her _ , Dale didn’t want to lift his head from the pillow. But he was alone in the bed, and he gradually became aware of sounds in the kitchen. All memories of quiet comfort began to dissipate as his mind worked its way out of slumber towards alertness. He sat up, straightened his clothes, found his shoes and a mirror on vanity to fix his hair in. With sleep in his eyes, he made his way out of the bedroom towards the voices.

Rounding the corner into the kitchen, he found Audrey standing at the stove, her back to him, pouring coffee from the percolator into a mug on the counter. He smiled at her, taking in the rumpled flannel pyjamas and sleepy curls falling down the back of her neck, and sighed, filled with the desire to fill the space at her side, to wrap his arm around her middle and draw her closer as she had done the night before to him, when his own panic attack had threatened to consume him utterly. He wanted to—

“Mornin’ Coop.”

Startled, Dale turned to the source of the greeting, and saw Sheriff Truman sitting at the small dining table beyond the kitchen. Beside him sat Laura Palmer.

Audrey spun around too. Her face softened as she smiled. “Good morning,” she said, reaching out to him to hand him the mug of coffee that she had clearly been preparing for herself.

He shook his head, then slid his fingers back over his hair self-consciously. “What’s going on?”

“I invited them,” Audrey said, laying a hand on his forearm.

“When?”

“I didn’t want to wake you,” she whispered.

_ That’s all well and good,  _ he thought.  _ But why are they here? _

“She phoned ‘round and told us you had a plan,” Harry said, gesturing to Laura. “Told me we should come over this morning and hash it out.”

Dale looked to Audrey, who smiled quickly and uttered under her breath. “What we talked about last night. About going back to the cave.”

He shook his head. “You did?” he asked her. “You told them?”

Audrey shook her head. “No, I just said—” she cut herself off, laying a hand on his arm. “Are you angry with me? Should I not have—”

Dale felt a flush rise in his cheeks. “No, I just…I’m not sure…”

“Why don’t you tell us the plan?” Harry offered. “We can work out the kinks, see if we can’t make it work.”

Dale looked to Audrey. Her encouragement was writ large in her face, everywhere but her sad blue eyes. He shook his head, ever-so-slightly, hoping she’d intervene to stop this from spiralling out of control. Instead, Audrey took up the cause.

“Agent Cooper thinks it might be possible to set everything back to rights, but it has to be done at the cave,” she said.

Dale blanched, feeling his throat go dry. The morning—which had started so softly blissful—had transformed into something he was entirely unprepared to deal with. He wish he’d taken Audrey’s coffee offer minutes before. He couldn't think without his coffee.

“You think that’ll work?” Harry asked. “I mean...you think that’s the place to go?”

Dale shrugged and tried to swallow. “I-I have no idea…” he answered. “It was just a basic idea. I haven’t thought it through entirely. And I’m not even sure—”

“But I thought…isn’t that where…BOB  _ wants  _ to go?” Harry asked, glancing at Laura. “I mean, if we give him what he wants, isn’t that a bad thing?”

Dale shook his head. “I don’t know. If we want to do this—if I’m to go back—it has to be through a portal,” he said, closing his eyes. “Back where I came from…Glastonbury Grove was the only portal we knew about. And it was unstable. The circumstances had to be exactly right. But Owl Cave…” he opened his eyes and looked at Laura, whose eyes were fixed on him. He nodded. “Yesterday, Laura was able to open the gateway with ease.”

“ _We_ opened it,” Laura said. “We _both_ had to be there or else it wouldn’t work.”

He nodded, remembering his gut feeling the night before. “That’s what I figured,” he said.

“But why does it need both of you?” Audrey asked.

Dale shook his head. It was his biggest question, and biggest fear. “Maybe we think this is the right way, and once we go in there…” he shuddered. “I was trapped there for twenty-five years. I don’t want to get trapped again.” He paused. “Not so soon after getting out.”

Harry tapped his fingertips against the table. “Is there a way to drop a lifeline? Like a trail of breadcrumbs maybe? So you can get out again?”

“No,” Dale replied. “You don’t understand: this isn’t a physical place. It’s…it’s beyond that. It’s metaphysical. It’s a feeling—not a place, but sensations, confusing, not real...”

“It’s powerful,” Laura said.

Harry turned to her. “How do you know?”

She shrugged. “BOB wouldn’t go there if wasn’t. It’s where he comes from.” She lifted her eyes to look at Dale. “I dreamed about him last night,” she said. “He told me what his plan is.”

All three eyes trained on her.

“What is it?” Harry demanded.

She didn’t take her eyes off of Dale’s, and suddenly he understood. “He wants me for himself, doesn’t he?”

Laura nodded. “He’s letting the  _ other  _ you go. He wants _you_. And the only way for him to get you is for me to take you in there.”

The sickening truth washed over Dale and he shivered. “What happens to you when he does?”

She shook her head. “I don’t know,” she whispered.

Dale looked at Harry, who was obviously anxious but determined, his hands clenched on the table in front of him.

“So what?” Harry said. “We let BOB take you both in there, and BOB goes into Coop, and we don’t know what will happen to Laura, and—”

“But maybe between the two of us?” Laura offered softly.

Dale looked down at the floor. He felt his stomach pit and his hands begin to tingle as the reality of the situation unfolded.  _ I need time,  _ he thought. His mind whirred as he spiralled once again, down the rabbit hole he’d been down the night before. He didn’t want to go back in there. Not yet. Would he ever want to? Would he ever be ready to?

_ And what about Audrey? _

She was standing so close to him he could see her socked feet in his narrow field of vision below. Just knowing she was there calmed him down immeasurably.

_ She’s not my Audrey,  _ he reminded himself.  _ But could I love her anyway? Could I learn to?  _ The thought excited him. He wanted to so badly. It would be easy, so easy...

_ If I stayed here, could I forget the rest of it? Could  _ this  _ become my reality? _

He flexed his toes against the bottoms of his shoes and shut his eyes.  _ I need more time. _

But when he looked up and saw Laura at the table again—her shoulders shaking as she stared into her coffee cup—his fear subsided.  _ I don’t have the luxury of time _ , he thought.  _ Not while Laura is harbouring an evil demon within her. Not while her soul hangs in the balance. _

_ I have to go. _

“Laura?” he asked finally.

She looked up at him, her eyes red-rimmed and tired.

“Is this really what you want to do?” he asked.

She nodded.

“You’ll have to go off the haloperidol,” he said. “BOB has to come to the fore.”

Again, she nodded. “I can’t stay like this forever,” she told him, an unmistakable quaver in her thin voice.

Beside him, Audrey hung her head. She knew what was coming. And so did he.

“When was your last dose?” he asked.

Harry answered for her when several seconds passed without Laura replying on her own. “About an hour ago. Right when I arrived to pick her up.”

Dale swallowed hard. “Okay. Let’s not waste any time then,” he said.

“You’re sure?” Harry asked.

Dale gestured to Laura. “She can’t stay like this, Harry,” he said, eyeing Audrey sideways. “And as much as I hate to admit it, I know I can’t stay here. I have to go back in.”

The tension was thick in the air around them, heavy and oppressive. Decisions were being made on the fly, before anyone had had a chance to think anything through. Dale struggled to keep his footing, relying on instinct alone to tell him what to do.

_ There was a time when you trusted your instincts _ , he thought to himself. But twenty-five years out of commission put that on hold. He had no trust left anymore, least of all for himself. 

But he didn't have any other choice.

Harry stood to his feet and helped Laura to hers. “Then it’s settled. I’ll have as many men as I can wrangle meet us up at Owl Cave.”

Dale nodded and followed Harry and Laura to the front door. “Take Laura to the station. Don’t leave her alone. Let the haloperidol wear off. I’ll be right behind you,” he said as Harry and Laura walked through the doors and into the hotel hallway beyond. He slung his coat over his arm. He wanted to shower, first. And then what? What was the protocol for a situation like this? Would he have to pack anything? Leave a note? Call Albert or Gordon?

_ No,  _ he thought as Harry and Laura receded down the hallway.  _ Cut ties. A clean break. _

Audrey cleared her throat beside him, and Dale realized he had made his way to the front door entirely without realizing she was following him. He stopped and turned to face her.

“I’ll be back in an hour, and we can go—”

But she shook her head. “No, Dale, I think I’ll sit this one out.”

“What?”

Audrey lowered her voice. “I’d rather not get into it...but I just...I can’t…”

Dale reached out to Audrey, but she shook her head.

“I don’t understand,” Dale said.

She laughed mirthlessly. “You don’t _have_ to understand. You just have to _accept_ it." Her smile was sad. "I can’t say goodbye. If I don’t say goodbye then it doesn’t have to end, and maybe I can just move on and pretend you're on vacation or something…”

Dale was stunned. “Audrey—”

“I’m sorry,” she said. She didn’t meet his eyes. “You should go.”

He wavered.

“Seriously,” she laughed again, her voice thickening with tears. “You should go now. There isn’t time to be maudlin. Just go.”

It wasn’t a suggestion; it was a command. Stung, Dale backed up into the hallway.  _ Right _ , he thought, as the last threads linking him to the early morning comforts disappeared; it was, all at once, as if none of it had happened.

_ It’s better this way. _

He didn’t say a word. He didn’t look back. He left the Horne family quarters. He pushed all thought of Audrey from his mind as he focused on the task at hand, ignoring the momentary devastation that came from knowing he’d broken someone else’s heart as badly as his own.


	23. Chapter 23

By the light of a clear, late afternoon sun, Owl Cave was far less menacing than it had ever been in any of the times he’d been there, in this world and his own. With sunlight soaking the ground in places, dappling it in others; with birds singing in the trees high above; the warmth of the breezes wrapped around the clearing. Dale lifted his face to the sky.

“It doesn’t seem right that so much evil should exist in such a place as this,” he muttered.

“Ours is not to reason why,” Harry said.

They were perched on the hood of Dale’s rental car, exactly where they’d been for much of the afternoon, waiting for Laura’s last dose of haloperidol to wear off. She was sleeping in the cab of the sheriff’s truck a few meters away. Hawk was in the passenger seat reading, waiting just like them.

Dale held his car keys in his hand. “I don’t know what to do with these,” he said. “If I don’t come out of there…”

“Someone will,” Harry said. “That’s what happened last time. It’ll happen this time.”

“You should still take them,” Dale said, holding them out to Harry. “Just in case.”

The keys fell heavily into Harry’s outstretched hand. He sighed. “This is all such a confusing situation,” he muttered.

“I know.”

Harry sniffed. “Are you really sure this is what you want to do?”

Dale nodded. “There’s no other option. I have to do this for Laura,” he said. “Where I come from, I was too late to save her. But here, I can do some good.”

Far off in the distance they heard an eagle’s cry. Dale sighed.

“I don’t know what we do once we’re in there,” he said. “And it’s anybody’s guess what will happen when we come out. _If_ we come out.”

“That’s why we’ve got backup. Two units on the road down the mountain. Hawk here with me,” Harry offered. “We know what we’re dealing with now.”

“Do you, Harry?” Dale asked. “Because I don’t think any of us really do.”

There was a very long pause before Harry responded. “Well, maybe not,” he said around an exhale. “But it’s a damn sight better than where we were even a week ago.”

Dale nodded and let the silence envelop them. But it wasn’t true silence; it was forest silence. The new, tender spring leaves proudly unfurled from the tips of their branches rustled in the slightest breeze, while the stiff pine and fir needles whispered along in the stronger gusts winding up the mountainside. Dale closed his eyes and listened, relishing the relative solitude.

After several long seconds, Dale opened his eyes and stared at the ground. “Promise me one thing, Harry.”

“Shoot.”

He swallowed. “If the me who appears is…well, what I mean is, if it’s not _me_ …if I’m acting strangely…” he sighed. “Just please make sure he stays away from Audrey.”

Harry nodded. “Of course,” he said. “Yeah, of course I will.”

Dale nodded, but still kept his eyes trained on the wood chips and damp soil a few feet in front of him.

“So…I was going to ask, but…” Harry began, attempting to be tactful. “Well, you were at Audrey’s last night, but she’s not here right now, and—”

“It’s complicated, Harry,” Dale said, realizing that it was a mouthful in more ways than one; his stomach had lurched up into his throat the moment her name was said, before plummeting into his shoes and leaving him stranded in the middle, somewhere between logic and feeling, with his heartbeat thudding in his ears.

“How so?”

Dale shut his eyes and sighed. “She thought it would be better if she didn’t come here today,” he said. “And I’m sure has her reasons…”

“And you?”

Dale shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t have a say, Harry. Audrey is going to have to stay here and face whoever it is that comes out of there when I go in, and I can’t make things worse by inserting myself into her life in that way…” he said, nudging a small stone with the toe of his shoe. “Besides, however she might feel about me, it’s not _me_ she’s feeling that for.”

“I don’t follow.”

He turned to look at Harry and managed a small smile, borrowing words from his conversation the night before. “I’m not her Dale. And she’s not my Audrey.”

Harry nodded. “And what about _your_ Audrey?” he asked. “Are you as in love with her as you are with this one?”

Dale sighed. “Harry, if you’d’ve asked me that question a week ago, I would have told you no,” he said. “But I think, honestly, a part of me has been falling since the first day I saw her.”

“She’s a remarkable woman.”

Dale nodded. He wondered, for the first time, what Audrey was doing on the other side. “Knowing her,” he said, “She’s probably figured out that I’m not the real me. And she’ll have half the town trying to solve that riddle.”

Harry nodded. “You’re probably right. If she’s anything like the Audrey Horne I know, anyway.”

“That’s just it,” Dale said with wonder in his voice. “I’ve had this feeling that Audrey is exactly the same across both realities. I can’t explain it, but…well, everyone else here is just slightly off from what I know and remember, except for her.”

“Really?”

He nodded. “I don’t know—I suppose I don’t know for sure about Laura, because I never met Laura…but…”

“But?”

Dale furrowed his brow. “I just had this feeling that Laura and Audrey were supposed to be important to this. A dream I had a few nights ago…I think I’ve been having it for a while but I haven’t been able to remember it. Of hands. Their hands, I’m sure of it. One guiding me one way and the other guiding me another. And it all makes some kind of sense. That I’d be torn between Audrey and Laura…”

“Between staying here and leaving.”

“Between staying with Audrey and helping Laura,” he corrected. “So the thing is: I _don’t_ know what I’m giving up with Audrey by leaving her here. But I _know_ I can’t leave Laura like this. I feel like this is her only chance. So that’s what I have to do, and if Audrey can’t be part of it, I have to respect that.” He blew out a breath. “She didn’t ask for this. None of you did.”

Harry put his hand on Dale’s shoulder. “But we’re here nonetheless.”

 _Some of you are,_ Dale thought, shaking his head to banish the thoughts. He checked his watch and then glanced up at the sun, which was angling lower and lower in the late afternoon sky. “We should see if Laura’s awake yet. She must be getting near the end of the last dose.”

Harry pushed himself off the hood of the car. Dale followed as they rounded the passenger side of the truck, where Hawk still sat, reading. Harry tapped on the glass, and his Deputy turned to look first at him and then into the backseat, where Laura slumbered.

“Should we wake her?” Hawk asked.

Dale peered in and nodded. “We should see where she is, what’s happening with her. Mentally. Physically,” he said. _The sooner we do this, the sooner it’s over._

_Unless it never ends._

_Unless we’re heading in there forever._

He dug his fingernails into his palms and watched as Harry opened the back door and leaned in over Laura’s prone figure. Gently, he shook her shoulder, and she roused.

“Is it time?” she asked.

“You tell us,” Dale said. “Where’s BOB?”

Laura pushed herself up and rubbed her eyes; as she did, a smile spread across her face that sent chills down Dale’s spine. “LOOKING FOR FUN, AS ALWAYS,” Laura hissed.

Hawk grit his teeth as Harry instinctively reached for his gun. Dale was the one to reach in and grasp Laura by the arm, holding her steady as he could. “Harry, handcuffs.”

Doing as he was told, the Sheriff cuffed Laura’s wrists. She began to cry.

“It’s all going to be over soon,” Dale tried to soothe.

“I know,” she whispered. “But NOT UNTIL WE PLAY A LITTLE, RIGHT COOP?”

He pulled her out of her seat, the three of them taking up positions around her—Harry on her left, Dale on her right, with Hawk pulling up the rear. They made their way around the truck toward the mouth of the cave.

“Good timing,” Harry said.

“Lucky guess,” Dale replied.

As they entered the cave, the temperature dropped considerably, and Laura began to shiver.

“It’s not much further,” Dale said.

“The petroglyph?” Hawk asked. “That thing always gave me the creeps.”

Laura sneered. “YOUR LACK OF IMAGINATION ASTOUNDS.”

They ignored BOB’s comment, and pushed further into the cave.

“Dale?” Laura’s voice broke through.

“Yes?”

“If this doesn’t work—”

“It has to,” he said. “Don’t think like that. It simply has to.”

“But I need you to know…” she continued, drawing a sharp intake of air, as if in pain, before doubling over and nearly falling to the floor of the cave. Dale stooped at her side, without letting go of her arm; his trust of BOB didn’t extend as far as the space between his body and Laura’s.

“Laura?” he asked.

“I’m fine,” she said through tight teeth. “I just…” she looked up at him. “Thank you.”

Shocked, Dale let his shoulders fall from the tense position they were in. “For what?”

“You’ve been a…good friend. You…were a wonderful…lover,” she said, adding. “I know it wasn’t really you…but I…”

She grimaced and shivered, and Dale shrugged off his suit jacket, draping it over her arms, and as he pulled back, Laura pressed her lips to his cheek, lingering there for far longer than Dale had expected.

“I wish I’d had the chance to get to know you better—” Laura whispered against his skin, and Dale closed his eyes, leaning into it even as she pulled away from him. He opened his eyes to see the lips that had kissed him turning into a snarl. “SO WOULD I. WHADDYA SAY COOP? CARE TO LET ME TAKE YOU FOR A TEST RUN?”

Dale stared her directly in the eyes. “Not today, BOB.”

They lifted Laura back up to her feet.

“YOU THINK YOU HAVE A PLAN?” BOB demanded. “YOU THINK YOU CAN OUTSMART ME? THINK AGAIN!”

The three men continued their march, six hands holding Laura steady as they continued into the darkness. As they rounded the final curve and the light from outside was lost to them, Dale felt a pang in his chest, wondering when he’d smell fresh air again, or feel the breeze on his face. The fear that grew within him made his ears ring.

At the same moment, the cave wall beside them began to glow.

They were here.

Dale turned to look at the petroglyph, the carved lines of which were the source of the intense golden shine. It was exactly as he remembered it, the image burned into his brain, twenty five years after he saw it the first time and just over twenty-four hours since he last saw it.

Hawk was rendered speechless, as was Harry; the two lawmen stared at the carving, absolutely spellbound. With shaking hands, Dale led Laura towards the wall, noticing that she, too, was transfixed by the sight.

At that moment, far off near the mouth of the cave, Dale heard his name. It echoed off the stone walls, ricocheting over and over until it reached his ears, but even with the distortion and garbling, he could tell instantly who it was.

“Audrey?” he called out.

“Shit,” Harry cursed as he tore his eyes from the wall and doubled back the way they’d come. He intercepted Audrey at the curve in the cave.

“Dale!” she cried out, tearing herself out of Sheriff Truman’s grasp and falling to the cave floor in the process.

“Audrey, this is too dangerous!” said Dale.

She sobbed. “I don’t care. I had to see you.”

Hawk stepped up and gripped Laura’s shoulders. “Go to her,” he said. “I’ll stay with Laura.”

Dale didn’t need to be told twice. He crossed the space between the two of them and hauled Audrey into his arms. 

“I was stupid,” she cried. “I was so stupid.”

“No you weren’t…”

“Yes I was. I never should have let you leave. Now you’re going and all we have are minutes…”

He pulled away and stroked her hair. “Audrey, listen to me. I’ll be back. The Dale you know will come back. It’ll be like I never left at all.”

Sobs continued to wrack her body. She pressed her face to his chest again, and he clucked his tongue.

“C’mere,” he whispered, embracing her.

Harry came up behind Audrey and put a hand on her shoulder. “Don’t worry, Coop,” he said. “Audrey and Hawk and me…everyone, all of us…we’ll manage on this end.”

He nodded, taking in Audrey’s tear-streaked face. He smiled at her, his chest tight, tears closing up his throat. “It’ll be alright.”

“I know,” she said, looking over his shoulder at Laura. “You have to help her. You’re the only one who can.”

Dale’s heart surged in his chest. “Audrey, no matter what happens, you know that—”

“I know…”

“Always.”

She nodded, pulling back to look at him. Inching up on her tiptoes, she kissed him, chastely.

“And I love you too,” she said. “Always.”

He nodded. “I know.”

As he pulled away, however reluctantly, he felt more at peace with his decision than ever. He looked to Harry, knowing this was a goodbye, not knowing when he’d next see the face of his friend— _his_ friend, _his_ Truman—but knowing that it was time for him to leave. But before he had the chance to say anything, Laura, still standing rapt in front of the petroglyph, began to mutter under her breath, forcing Dale’s attention away from Audrey and Harry and back towards her.

“Agent Cooper?”

“Laura?”

“uoy sevol ehS,” Laura’s voice croaked through, garbled and backwards, but not inflected with BOB’s menace. “.noos reh ees ll’uoY .edis rehto eht no s’ehS .uoy rof gnitiaw neeb s’ehS”

Astonished, Dale struggled to maintain composure. “What do you mean?” he asked. “Who are you?”

Laura shook her head. “...sraey evif ytnewt ni niaga uoy ees dluow I uoy dlot I”

The wall began to glow red, and before Dale could do or say anything more, Laura took him by the hand and dragged him through the curtains, away from Hawk, away from Harry, away from Audrey.

Away from everything.

Into darkness...


	24. Chapter 24

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Two chapters in one night! It must be a special day...

> Red.
> 
> Red and white.
> 
> Red and black and white.
> 
> Again.
> 
> No movement. No breeze. No air. Everything is hot. Stifling. Close. So close. Suffocating me. Can't breathe. Can'tbreathecan'tbreathecan't breath.
> 
> Can't _think_. 
> 
> I hear music. Hot music. Waves of hot music floating on the no-breeze. Stale no-breeze hot music.
> 
> I shiver. Fire in my veins. Fever. Hot chills. Shivering. Shivering fire.
> 
> Afraid. So afraid. Why?
> 
> Alone.
> 
> _Laura._
> 
> _Where’s_ _Laura_?
> 
> Look for her. Look and spin and look and turn around. Look. For her.
> 
> Gone. She’s gone. Was she here?
> 
> No Laura. No nobody. Walk to find her. Walk through the empty room. Empty rooms. Void.
> 
> I walk.
> 
> Curtains. Push through. Pull apart. New room: Empty.
> 
> Back. Back the way I came. I've done this before.
> 
> New room: Empty.
> 
> New room: Empty.
> 
> Empty.
> 
> E m p t y.
> 
> E  m  p  t  y.
> 
> E   m   p   t   y.
> 
> So different. Why? Why is it so different?
> 
> Think. Thinkthinkthink. Think!
> 
> Curtains. Push through. Pull apart.
> 
> Suddenly:
> 
> Blurs. Shapes. Fast. Running. Many men running. Chasing. Being chased. Endless looping. Back and forth, forwards and backwards. Loud. Laughter and loud and footfalls and and and around and around and around and around and—
> 
> I leave the way I came. Step into the hallway.
> 
> I see me.
> 
> I see me standing at the end of the hallway, looking back at me.
> 
> Me looking at me.
> 
> Perfectly still.
> 
> It’s me.
> 
> _.em s’tI_
> 
> My hair. My hands. My legs. My suit. My tie. My eyes.
> 
> The _eyes_.
> 
> Panic. Lost. Fear.
> 
> Fear.
> 
> He continues.
> 
> I follow.
> 
> I  _chase_.
> 
> Music fades. Lights fade. Lights flash.
> 
> We run.
> 
> I run after him and he runs away from me and we run and run until I catch up with him and we tumble together through the curtains and the lights are blinding and I feel him beneath my hands but he he's not there anymore and when the lights go down he is gone.
> 
> I am alone again.
> 
> Laughter. Far away. Quiet, bubbling. Echoed.
> 
> _".ereh era sdneirf ruoy fo emoS"_
> 
> Don’t move. Don’t move don’t move don’tmovedon’tmovedontmovedontmovedontmove
> 
> “. _moor gnitiaw eht si sihT”_
> 
> Who said that?
> 
> _“.kcab emocleW”_
> 
> No. No, no, no…
> 
> _“.repooC elaD”_
> 
> Where is he? The Little Man—where is he?
> 
> Can’t see. Can’t think. There’s no one there. Room empty. Room. Empty.
> 
> Room.
> 
> Empty.
> 
> Where did they go? Where did _I_ go?
> 
> I don’t want to be here.
> 
> Calm. Stay calm. Breathe. Breathe breathe breathe breathebreathebreathe…Walk. Walk in. Walk. In. Right. Left. Right. Left.
> 
> Right way?
> 
> Curtain moves. Parts, side to side. It’s Laura. Laura’s here. Laura is here. Hair curled. Black dress. Beautiful. Angelic. Not _their_ Laura.
> 
> _My_ Laura.
> 
> _“.uoY.”_
> 
> I nod. Not afraid.
> 
> _“.ecaf ym was I”_
> 
> Nod.
> 
> _“.BOB was I”_
> 
> I shiver.
> 
> _“.ereh si eH”_
> 
> “Where?”
> 
> Laura smiles. Smiles wide. She laughs. Holds out her hand. Clasped. Tightly. Closed fingers. She opens them.
> 
> “ _.diarfa eb ton oD_ ” she says. _".mih koot aruaL”_
> 
> "But...you're Laura."
> 
> She smiles.
> 
> "Are you Laura Palmer?"
> 
> _“.repooC tnegA ,emoh og ot emit s'tI_
> 
> She pushes her hand at me. I look down It’s dark. But. A golden glint.
> 
> A ring.
> 
> “Owl Cave.”
> 
> Laura smiles. Closes her hand. Steps to me. Eyes. Clear eyes. Beautiful eyes. Alive. Smiling.
> 
> _“.uoy knahT”_
> 
> Her hands. Hands holding mine. Red fingernails.
> 
> No ring.
> 
> The ring is gone.
> 
> _“.siht roF”_
> 
> The ring is gone. Laura is here and the ring is gone.
> 
> Just...gone.
> 
> I’m not afraid.
> 
> The lights go out. And I'm not afraid.

* * *

_The next thing I know, the lights come up and I’m standing next to her in a different room. She’s sitting in a chair. She’s crying. I put my hand on her shoulder and she looks up at me, and I can’t read her expression. Surprise, certainly, but also something else. Something else I haven’t seen. Understanding. Resignation. Relief._

_Laura is relieved._

_She looks away, and I think she knows something I don’t because she looks so sad. So tired of being sad, too. I feel like if she were to sleep now she’d sleep for a hundred years. And I want to let her do that. I’ll stand here watching over her for a hundred years if I have to, just to make sure that she can rest._

_She doesn’t get the chance to, though. I think whatever Laura was expecting to happen starts to happen. The light changes. Her face is cast in the most brilliant, clear blue. She sees something, something that isn’t there, or that I can’t see at least, and she starts to weep._

_But she laughs, too. She laughs and cries and I can’t tell what she’s seeing but I know it’s made her happier than I think anyone has seen her—certainly during her life, anyway. And she’s so beautiful in that moment that I forget everything else I’ve ever known about her—the evils visited upon her during her life, the horror of her death, all of it—and see her as the woman she never got to be. Unfettered, unburdened, and vital._

_I don’t want to take my eyes off her._

_But I do, once more, trying to see what she sees, what is making her weep with joy. I stare, peering into the darkness beyond the place where the light is coming from, but I can’t see anything. Not a thing. The light is so blinding. But I’m sure there’s nothing there to begin with._

_When I turn back, she’s gone._

* * *

FBI Special Agent Dale Cooper opened his eyes and saw stars. 

The air that passed over his skin was cold in the way that winter air is cold, damp and penetrating. He gasped, filling his lungs with air that smelled of fire smoke. Dale’s first thought was to panic.  _ The forest is on fire. _

He pressed his hands into the earth and felt his fingertips sink into snow.

“Harry! He’s back!”

Hearing her voice made Dale’s eyes water. He tried to turn his head to look in her direction; she met him more than halfway, coming to his side and sinking to her knees in the snow before hauling him into her lap.

“Dale?”

He gasped again, choking on the frigid air, before finding his voice and pulling her name from the deepest part of him.

“Audrey…”

She stroked the side of his face as she settled his head against her legs. Peering down at him, blocking his view of the open sky above, she was an absolute vision. But she looked…different.

Mustering all his strength, Dale pushed himself up. “Is it really you?” he asked her.

“Who else would it be?” Audrey asked, trying her best to keep him down, to relax him. It was no use. By the time Harry had run over with the wool emergency blanket from the back of his truck, Dale had pushed himself to his knees in front of her. He had her face in his hands, and was searching her for  _ something _ …

Harry threw the blanket over his shoulders. “Hey, Coop…” he growled. “Take ‘er easy, okay?”

“Where am I?”

Audrey brushed his hair off his forehead and cocked her head to the side. “You’re home, sweetie.”


	25. Chapter 25

“Home”, as it turned out, was no longer the Great Northern Hotel. The “home” Audrey drove him to was a small house made of wood, set back on its lot and surrounded by trees. Not Room 315. No living out of a suitcase. A house. 

_ His  _ house.

He took each step up the long sidewalk as if he were a newborn. On the small front porch, he saw a string of unlit Christmas lights clinging to the eaves; a broom leaned against a porch swing, dusted with a layer of snow.

Audrey reached forward and unlocked the front door for him. He pushed the door open and stepped inside.

The house was dimly lit from a small light coming from what he presumed was the kitchen. He toed off his shoes—out of respect, he realized; this was his house but it didn't yet feel like  _ his house— _ and padded across the living room toward the fireplace.

“Has it really been five years?” he asked.

Audrey nodded. In the quiet of the entryway, he could hear the fabric of her coat rustling with each movement. “Did you really feel you were in there for  _ twenty _ -five?”

“Yes,” he said, his voice cracking. He cleared his throat. “I think so.”

Audrey closed the door behind her and shrugged off her coat, throwing it over the back of the chair nearest the front entrance.

“Oh,” he said as he saw her. “You don't have to stay. It's late and I'm sure you have—” he stopped as he thought about how he'd finish that sentence.  _ A home of your own? Does she still live at the hotel?  _ He eyed the small gold band on her left ring finger.  _ A husband now? Someone waiting for her? _

The pang of jealousy that took root in the pit of his stomach was uncomfortable but unwarranted. He knew that.  _ You couldn’t have expected her to wait for you... _

Audrey stopped short and shook her head. “No, Dale, it's fine. I’ll stay,” she offered. “Unless you'd rather I left.”

It was the last thing in the world he wanted; his heart surged in his chest. “No, I-I...if you want to stay, I'd be happy to…”

She smiled and looked down at her hands, covering the ring quickly with her right hand as she clasped them in front of her. “So you don't remember anything?”

He shook his head. “I remember  _ different _ things.”

“Like what?”

Dale had been over this at the station with them, the details of the case laid out for their scrutiny as they tried to determine what exactly had just happened; Audrey had heard all of it, had been listening intently the entire time. Surely she didn't need a refresher.

“Well,” he started.

“I'm just curious because...well a lot happened in five years here, and it's like you're starting from scratch, with a whole different set of information, and—”

He nodded. His sadness weighed on him—this was his proper place, and he was five years removed from where he wanted to be. There was no way to get that time back. He'd have to re-calibrate entirely.

_ I don't even know where to start. _

But when he looked up at Audrey, he knew he was wrong.

“Well, Audrey, what did I miss?”

She took a step forward. “What do you want to know?”

A pause. “What...what was I—the other me—what was he like?”

Audrey wavered. “You— _ he _ was...different,” she started, adding. “But not so different that  _ everyone _ noticed.”

“But  _ you  _ did,” he said. “Didn't you?”

She shook her head. “I just had a feeling...you know. It took so long for anyone to listen to me, but once they did…”

Dale looked down at his shoeless feet, flexing his toes against the hardwood floor. “I have you to thank for so much.”

She took another step into the living room. “You met another  _ me,  _ right? Where you were?”

He nodded, but his eyes remained fixed on the floor. “Yes.”

“What was she like?”

Dale lifted his eyes to hers. “Exactly like you,” he replied. “You were the only constant for me. A...a touchstone.”

“I'm glad,” Audrey smiled. “I’m glad I could be that.” She sighed. “Gosh, it must have been just awful for you. So many years trapped in that awful place…only to come out and to find that so much was different.” She paused. “And then to have to go back  _ in _ …did you really go with Laura? Was she really alive?”

Dale nodded. “I don’t know how to explain any of this, and I’m sure it sounds insane, but—”

“It’s not insane,” she said. “Not by a mile.”

The corner of his lips quirked up into a half smile.  _ Of course you’d say that _ , he thought.

He looked around the room, and Audrey reached over to flip on the light, bringing the space into brilliant focus. It was sparsely appointed, but comfortable; a small sofa sat beneath the window, next to a cozy arm chair that reminded Dale of the one his father had when he was a boy. There was a television, a record player, bookshelves filled with weighty tomes on either side of the fireplace. It looked lived in. None of it seemed so out of place that his fears about slipping back into this life, picking up the pieces again, began to dissipate. This home was perfectly his.

And yet it wasn’t.

He rested his hand on the fireplace mantle, next to an ornate clock that ticked off the seconds in slow progression.

“I really live here,” he said.

Audrey nodded. “Yes, you do.”

He shook his head. “I moved to Twin Peaks,” he muttered, reminded of his long ago desire to purchase real estate in the area. He wasn't entirely surprised that he'd gone through with it. “Do I own this place?”

Again, she nodded. “Yes. You bought it about a four years ago.”

“Do I still work for the FBI?”

“Yes. Occasionally. But not since Albert was brought on the case—you were put on administrative leave then,” she said. “Drove you a bit crazy.”

He looked up at her suddenly, and then at the sofa—a soft green cashmere blanket thrown over the back—and then at the armchair—with its overstuffed decorative pillow tucked into the crook of the armrest—as his eyes widened.

“Does someone else live here with me?”

Audrey nodded, opening her mouth to speak; Dale cut her off.

“Is it Annie?”

She straightened her back, her mouth forming a little ‘O’ as she blinked several times and took a deep breath. “No, Dale. It’s not Annie.”

“But...Annie is—”

“She went back to the convent, shortly after…,” Audrey said, trailing off. “She wasn’t well, and Norma thought it best to move her someplace where she could recover, among friends and people she knew and trusted.”

_ Not family?  _ “But her sister lives here, and—”

“Dale…" she paused, sighing before chewing on her lip. "Annie was afraid of you,” she said finally. “She knew before anyone that  _ you  _ weren’t  _ you _ .”

An intense shiver rocked Dale’s shoulders as the answer to his long question was finally answered. One of many that would come up…

He was suddenly very very tired.

“I need to sit down,” he said.

“Okay,” he heard Audrey whisper as he turned to the mantle to steady himself.

His hand brushed a wooden picture frame, knocking it flat on its face. Startled, he picked it up and set it back upright… 

It was a picture of him.

Audrey and him.

With trembling hands, he picked up the frame and studied it for several long seconds before looking up again at Audrey, whose eyes were filled with tears.

He looked at it again. “It’s a wedding photo...”

Audrey cocked her head to the side and smiled. “Yes it is.”

Dale dropped his hands to his side. “We’re married?”

Bravely, Audrey nodded, right before a sob wracked her body. “We are.”

_ Married,  _ he thought.  _ Audrey and I are married. Audrey and I… _

“Are you disappointed?” she asked.

His eyes flicked to hers. “Disappointed?”

“Because I’m not Annie. Because you went into that place in love with Annie and here you are now, five years later, and everything is different and—”

Dale dropped the photo to the ground and crossed the room in two stride, folding Audrey into his arms as the tears he’d been holding back since he re-emerged hours earlier finally crested and fall from his eyes. He buried his face into the crook of her neck as he wept. “Oh Audrey,” he whispered against her hair, her skin. “I could never be…”

Audrey embraced him in return, and it suddenly felt as if he’d never truly known  _ home  _ until then.

Still, he wrenched himself away, holding her at arms’ length for a blistering moment. “But you married the  _ other  _ me,” he said.

“Yes,” she whispered through her own tears. “But it was all part of the plan.”

He shook his head in disbelief. “How?”

Audrey wavered, her voice dropped to a whisper. “They didn’t want me to tell you this until you were readjusted…”

“ _ How? _ ”

“I knew it wasn’t the real you since the first time I saw you, when you came to see me in the hospital after the bank explosion…”

_ Bank explosion? _

“I was confused and a little worried but nobody listened so I took matters into my own hands,” she continued. “I went to college. I studied psychology, parapsychology, mythology, theology…everything I could get my hands on. And after a few years, Sheriff Truman and Deputy Hawk, they noticed something was up too, so we banded together. Decided it would be a good idea to get as close to you as we could.” She took a deep breath. “We got married so I could watch you, be near you, and eventually so that I could help to bring the  _ real  _ you back.”

Dale’s heart sank. “So this is strange for you, then. You must not really want to—”

Audrey’s eyes shot open as shook her head. “No, no. That’s not it,” she said, grabbing his hands in hers. “I love you. I’ve loved you since the moment you saved my life at One Eyed Jack’s,” she lowered her voice. “I knew all along that I wasn’t married to you, not really. But I hoped against hope that when you came back…if you came back…that you—the real you—would want…”

It suddenly made sense, the links between the other Audrey, the way he’d felt around her, and what Laura had said to him in the Red Room. She—Audrey— _ did  _ love him. She  _ had _ been waiting for him the entire time. She’d done everything for him on this side, so that he could find his way back. To her. To this moment. It had all been pushing him here.  _ This  _ is how things were going to be set to rights, how everything was supposed to be.

“Audrey—”

“It’s okay if you don’t feel the same—”

Dale reached for her, clasping his hand to the side of her face. “Oh, Audrey…” he whispered. “If you’ll have me.”

She laughed. “There’s never been anyone else for me to have,” she answered. “No one else I would have wanted to have.”

He knew she meant it. Somehow, he just knew—Audrey Horne never said anything she didn’t mean. 

And right now, that was exactly the kind of stability he needed. The surety she represented would give him strength. Together they would answer the questions, piece the world back together.

Make new memories. 

Together.

Dale stroked her hands and brought them up to his lips to kiss them. “There’s no one else I want to have either,” he told her. “Not now. With so much in front of me—”

“Of us.”

_ Yes _ , he thought.  _ Of us _ . 

And with that, the first piece fell into place.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 25 chapters for 25 years. I hope you all enjoy the premiere tonight! 
> 
> This story would not have seen the light of day without the early support from eccesapientia and tqpannie, and the intense beta-ing throughout by m'colleague RedemptionByFire...honestly, without you--your late night chats, the Skype sessions, encouragement when I was sure I'd never write any more, little notes in the Google Doc--this story would never, ever, ever have seen the light of day. Retroactively dedicating this to you.


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